Guardians
by LizzyJane23
Summary: Blair,Hope,Annie,Abby,Grace and Ed lead boring,ordinary lives. They want something, anything magical and exciting to happen. But when it does, it will change everything, and the forces of chaos are slowly closing in on them...
1. Chapter 1

Ok, so this is my first try at writing a story seriously. It is all my own work and I'm sorry if its really bad. Either way I hope you enjoy it! :D

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><p>Chapter 1<p>

"Detention," she said, her words full of poison, ice, malice and just about every other unpleasantness that can be expressed in a single word. We looked at each other with panic-stricken faces. We knew that Miss Greenwood had been out to get us since day 1 of the school year and now that time had come. Fortunately the bell chose that minute to ring and we dashed off to English, leaving the remains of our food on the table for Miss G to clean up. She'd get us for it later, but we were safe for now. Walking to the classroom, we all turned to stare at Ed.

"What?" she asked, looking puzzled. "I honestly didn't do anything this time."

Hope raised an eyebrow. "Really?" she asked.

Ed nodded, her face the picture of innocence. Because we all believed her. Not.

English passed way too quickly. It is definitely my favourite subject as we have Mr Jameson who is the best teacher at this school. English lessons will never be the same when he leaves at the end of the year. It was October then.

Unfortunately he wasn't in that day, so we had a cover teacher who basically kept leaving the room every two minutes. In the significantly less fun lesson, we were told to write all about ourselves, what we really think about school and life. I considered this carefully. I didn't know what to write. I didn't want to swear and I didn't want to say things that were too mean, just in case it was shown to the headmistress. Eventually I just decided to write it, and then edit parts out later. I then spent the rest of the lesson trying to make up the time I'd spent dithering.

Chapter 2

All about me

Well, my name is Blair Robson. I'm average height and I have long brown hair and grey eyes. I'm in the top set at school, but I'm not the best at anything. I'm pretty average at art, music and drama and when it comes to PE, I'm best described as athletically challenged. Except for swimming, I'm ok at that.

I love reading, as do all of my friends. It has also been said that I have an over active imagination. I'm not dirty-minded or anything, I just can't concentrate on anything boring and come up with nutty daydreams instead. This girl is still waiting for the owl to bring her letter to Hogwarts. I have also had some of the most bizarre dreams ever, including the magic mop and the loch ness monster in the swimming pool. Don't ask.

It doesn't help that I go to the most boring and suckish school ever: Milton Girls' School. It seems to be an ordinary school, but the reality is so much worse. We have a seriously horrendous uniform. You may have seen us in the hideous bright red blazers that we are forced to keep on in 20* heat (this is England; 20* is hot here); the skirts that are so much fun to hold down on windy days; and the dreaded winter berets that so ridiculous, they never make it out of the gates. Added to this, the food is mainly inedible and most of the teachers are demonic freaks. I'm practically asleep in most lessons and the ones where I'm not are taught by evil teachers like Miss Greenwood. The exception to this rule is English with Mr Jameson.

The worst part of all this is that we don't even get to home on a night. That's right, Milton is a boarding school. It's full of teenage girls, whose parents don't care about them. We have all been left to die slowly of immense boredom. It's so sad…

The only thing that stops we going mad (well, even more so) is my amazing friends. There are six of us and we are always together, we even share a room. We are highly immature and many people don't seem to get us. We don't care. There's Annie Phillips, the loud one; Abby Blakefield (It's Abby with a y. If you spell it ie then she goes off it), the sporty one; Grace Anderson, the girly one; Ed Barras, the mad one; Hope Johnson, the relatively sane one; and me, Blair. I don't know which 'one' I am. Maybe I'm the ditzy one (I'm insanely forgetful), or the imaginative one, or maybe just the average one. I'm really nothing special.

However, even though we all love each other (not in THAT way), not everyone feels the same. WE are 6 girls who are slightly mad, are total bookworms and are in the top set. Also, 4 of us had really nerdy glasses last year (thank the Lord for contacts). Needless to say, 'Randoms' and 'Nerd Herd' are some of the nicer names we've been called.

This is mainly the work of 1 person; the girl who makes Miss Greenwood look like Miss Honey. Her name is Chloe Morgan, demon child and my ex best friend.

Chloe and I were best friends throughout primary school and we were so excited when we both started Milton at the start of Year 7. We began to drift apart that year, but we stayed friends. However everything changed back in September. Libby Rivers, the most popular and bitchy girl in our year was left without a best friend. Chloe instantly left us behind and slimed up to Libby. Nowadays, the only time she comes near us is to make our lives a misery. There is no escape as she is in most of the same classes as me. It's kind of depressing. Miss Greenwood loves Libby and Chloe, but that's no surprise as they probably learned about evil from her.

Despite my hideous school life, I am a pretty optimistic person. I try to see the good n life and I don't care if people think I'm weird. I choose to think that they are the wierdos and I am normal. The only thing is, I wish my life were more exciting. I wish on a daily basis that some of the things I read in fantasy books were true. Oh well, a girl can dream.

Chapter 3

I put down my pen. My wrist had seized up from writing. I knew I'd have to edit parts out from my essay, but I wasn't doing that in detention, where I was currently sitting. I glanced round the dimly lit classroom. There was still half an hour to go and I was immensely bored. Annie and Abby were having a staring competition in the corner and it was really hard not to laugh at their faces. Grace was staring out the window, Hope was absent-mindedly doodling on her books and Ed was actually asleep.

We were sitting there under the hawk-like stare of Miss Greenwood, who strangely couldn't see what the others were doing. Instead, her gaze was fixed on me, as if she was imagining something falling on top of me. I looked up to see if anything was suspended on a rope above my head, but there wasn't. She kept on staring and I felt my skin prickle. Something wasn't right, I could feel it. Something was about to happen, but I didn't know what.

As soon as I'd thought this, something did happen. The room began to fill with a sinister black smoke and I began to feel drowsy. The others were beginning to nod off too. Ed snored loudly, but that's just typical Ed. I fought to stay awake, and as I did so I caught a glimpse of Miss Greenwood. Her eyes were glowing a creepy red, and I thought I saw what looked like giant bat wings unfolding from the back of her frumpy dress.

Now, I've read a lot of fantasy novels but even someone who hasn't would have known that what was happening was bad, very bad. It was with this thought that I blacked out, and my head hit the desk.

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><p>Ta-da! I don't know what you thought of that. If you liked it, please review. Even if you hated it, please review (actually maybe not...). Hopefully I'll post some more soon. :D<p>

Oh, and if anyone comes up with any bright ideas for titles could you let me know. Random Story is a pretty bad title...


	2. Chapter 2

Ok, so here's some more. Thanks to Lulu Bee and Ellie for reviewing. Also, well done to you guys for picking up on where the characters came from (fyi, they're all different parts of different people). Anyways, hope you enjoy this part as much as you enjoyed the 1st part.

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><p>Chapter 4-<p>

Next thing I knew, the 6 of us were standing in a long dark corridor. Huge oak doors branched off every few metres, as far as the eye could see. I was scared. I didn't think that I imagined the demon that was Miss Greenwood, and I had a feeling that whatever it was lurking behind one of the doors. For a few minutes there was silence, and then everyone began to talk at once.

"What just happened?"

"Where do you suppose we are?"

"I'm scared..."

"Omigosh! This is so cool!"

Grace and Ed were surrounded by a ball of comforting light, breaking the darkness. Ed was literally glowing with a warm light whereas Grace was holding a fireball in each hand seemingly without being burned.

"How are you guys doing that?" I asked.

"I don't know," replied Ed. "I just wished it would be lighter and poof; glow in the dark girl."

"I clicked my fingers and the fireballs appeared. I don't know any more than that," said Grace.

"That's not fair!" cried Annie. "I want a cool power too!" she stamped her foot in a childish rage. We all heard a loud noise and the ground we were standing on crumbled away to nothing. All of a

Suddenly, we were freefalling endlessly through space.

"Oops?"

"Hold on!" shrieked Abby, through the gale force winds that were blowing around us. We clung on to her as she managed to shoot upwards, riding the air currents back to the relative, if uneasy safety of the corridor. As we stood in the corridor once again, I noticed something odd. None of the light from Ed and Grace had touched Hope. She was as much in darkness as if there was no light at all. It was ever so slightly creepy. I shivered despite the heat from the blazing fireballs. Something was behind us, and I didn't want to find out what.

I heard the ragged breathing of something inhuman. Slowly, I turned around and found myself face to face with the monster that was Miss Greenwood. She snarled, baring enormous fangs. Hope put her hands over her face and squealed in terror. There was another cracking noise and I prepared to freefall again, inching closer to Abby.

However the cracking sound hadn't come from the ground. Black lightning, darker than anything imaginable erupted from Hope's hands, knocking the demon teacher to the cold floor. Its body lay there, twitching slightly. It was making me feel quite ill. I wished it was gone. As soon as I'd thought this, a heard a rushing noise from behind me. A huge tidal wave was surging down the corridor. It swept away the demon and then it was gone, leaving everybody dripping wet except for me.

I thought about how insanely cool this all was. It was at this point that a rather depressing thought hit me; I had probably fallen asleep in detention and had dreamed the whole freaky encounter with the immense super-powers and everything.

Suddenly I noticed how tired I felt. Abby and Hope was slumped in a corner, Annie was swaying precariously on her feet, and the lights flickered as Ed and Grace tried (and failed) to suppress yawns. I began to feel drowsy again, only this time it felt nice; like curling up in bed, unlike before when it was dark and sinister. I fell back on the hard stone floor and everything went White...

Chapter 5-

When we next awoke (for real this time?) we were in what looked like the office of some kind of corporate big shot. Everything was White and pristine and we looked oddly out of place in our grubby school uniforms. We were kind of afraid to touch anything.

Suddenly the White wooden doors opened and Mr Jameson walked in. "ah, good," he said, smiling. "You're awake at last."

"Is this some kind of weird dream?" asked Annie, staring at him in disbelief. Mr Jameson shook his head.

"You'd better tell us what's going on right now mister," demanded Ed. "where are we? What do you want? Why?"

Mr Jameson sighed. "Calm down Ed and take a seat girls," he said, gesturing to a cluster of armchairs in a corner. The office really was massive.

"What was that in that dark corridor? Was it real?" whispered Grace.

"Yes it was. As is all of this." he gestured round the room, his voice stern. "That was a shadow demon. They rarely enter this realm at all, and it's amazing that one has resided in our midst undetected for so long"

"You mean miss greenwood?" I squeaked, my voice sounding much higher than I'd originally intended.

Mr Jameson's face was grave. "Correct, Blair. She came after the 6 of you because you possess great power. This is further proved by the fact that you banished her, whilst in the gateway to chaos, the place where creatures of darkness draw strength."

"Power? You mean that cool stuff that happened was real?" asked Abby sounding like a small child on Christmas morning.

Mr Jameson smiled. "Each of you has power over one of the forces of the natural world. Blair, you have power over water; Grace, fire; Annie, earth; and Abby, air."

"Um, excuse me sir, but what about us?" asked Hope.

"Hope Johnson, you and Edwina Barras..."

Ed scowled. She cannot stand it when anyone uses her full name. I could tell she was about to say something either very sarcastic or very rude when Mr Jameson continued.

"You 2 have been given the most important powers of all. Ed, you have the power of light and Hope, you have the power of darkness. You must work together, all 6 of you, but especially you 2. For if you become unbalanced as a group, then so does the universe, and chaos may be able to take over."

"Wait a minute," said Hope. "If I have this power of darkness, does that make me evil? Or am I supposed to go all emo or something? Because that is not going to happen. Ever."

"Hope, listen to me," Mr. Jameson began in a deadly serious tone. "Darkness doesn't always equate to evil, just as light doesn't always bring good."

I racked my brains, trying to think of the book that he had stolen that line from. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Annie doing the same. She reads even more than I do, and that's saying something.

"It's true though," said Mr. Jameson. "The power of darkness doesn't mean that hope has to change anything. It's just a force of nature that she can control. The same applies to all of you."

A thought suddenly popped into my head. "Why are you telling us all this now? Why here? And where do you fit into all of this yourself Mr Jameson?"

He looked flustered momentarily then lowered is voice, "A great evil is rising from the depths of chaos. You must ensure it stays there. You are the guardians of this realm and you must not let it slip into chaos and evil. This place is another gateway. However, it leads to the realm that is the opposite of chaos, where all goodness comes from. It is the one place where mortals are permitted, that is completely inaccessible to hazu and other beings of chaos, the one place where they cannot overhear us."

Ed gave a sigh. "That's a lot of pressure to put on 6 teenage girls, isn't it?"

"Yes, but I believe you can do this. It is your destinies to save the world, so you must remember all I have said. I will now return you to Milton. You must beware of anything suspicious as the gateways are so nearby. Anything coming from chaos or its parallel will come for you first."

"Good to know," muttered Abby.

"Good luck, and try not to die!"

Everything started to fade at that point. I vaguely remember Ed shouting something along the lines of, "Die? Who said ANYthing about dying?"

I could feel myself lapsing into unconsciousness for the third time but at the last moment I remembered something desperately important. I screamed, "Wait Mr Jameson! You still haven't told us where you fit into this..."

There was no answer and I blacked out yet again.

Chapter 6-

I don't know how long it was before the world came back into focus. I'd been having an insane dream where I was being chased by owls. That had definitely been a dream though; the gateway worlds had felt much more real. However when I came to this time I knew I was really awake because we were back in miss greenwoods classroom. Added to that I felt really stiff and sore, also it was raining outside so I knew we were back in England, rather than any weird gateway world.

However now that I was fully awake and back in the relative normality of Milton, I was beginning to wonder if the crazy scenes in the gateway worlds had just been a crazy dream. Secretly I hoped that it was real as I've always dreamed of having magic and being like some kind of fantasy superhero, like Maximum Ride, Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. I realise that this doesn't help my nerdy reputation, but I don't particularly care. The others were evidently thinking along the same lines as I was met with 5 puzzled yet excited, if slightly bleary from sleep expressions.

It was then that I caught sight of the clock. It read 9pm the exact same time that things began to turn weird. How could be that no time had passed? Miss greenwood wasn't in the classroom, making me wonder if we really had done away with her. However there wasn't much time for wondering, as we legged up to our top floor bedroom, in case she returned. We were exhausted by the time we made it to the top floor and crashed straight into bed fully clothed.

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><p>Please review. Love you guys! xx<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

Ok, so thanks again to Lulu Bee for reviewing, and thanks to Lulu Bee, Ellie and anyone else who's read this for actually bothering to read it. Here's another two chapters for all you lovely people. Enjoy!

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><p>Chapter 7-<p>

The next day was Saturday, so we had no lessons. After some foul porridge (believe me, the song 'Food, Glorious Food' has been sung many a time) we headed to our favourite spot, the roof, for what would probably be the last time that year. Once winter set in, we'd have to make do with the centrally heated, Wi-Fi accessible library. It's nowhere near as fun as the roof.

The best thing about having a top floor bedroom is that it's easy to get onto the roof. Nobody knows about the hidden stairs to get up there and on Saturday's nobody cares what you do. Sadly we can't get on the roof from about November to March because we'd probably get blown off or we'd freeze to death.

Anyway, up on the roof we began to talk about the bizarre events of the previous night.

"Do you think it was just a dream?"

"Well, how could we all have had the same dream?"

"I'd like to think it's real..."

"Yes Blair, but you read WAY too many fantasy novels."

"Well, I'm not jumping off this roof to test that theory."

"Wait guys. I agree with Blair. I think it was real. Grace look at your jumper." (Yes, we still have to wear the horrendous school uniforms on weekends)

We all turned to look at Grace. It took a few minutes but eventually we spotted what Hope was on about. The sleeves of Grace's school jumper were singed black, as if she'd been holding them too close to a fire. Her face told me that she noticed it too.

"Stand back people," she said. "I'm going to try something."

We inched back as far as we could in the small space on the roof. Grace clicked her fingers and just like last night, a fireball ignited in her palm without burning her.

"I'm pretty sure we weren't dreaming" she said.

"Um ok," I said with a grin. "Someone else try something."

"I'll go last," Abby volunteered. "I'm not jumping off this roof so I can die and discover that it's only Grace who has cool powers."

Ed screwed up her face in concentration. Soon she began to glow again. She opened her eyes and grinned. "Well I think we can safely say that Grace is not the only one with cool powers."

I tried to concentrate on making something happen with the water power that I was supposed to have. It began to rain. Hard. I couldn't tell whether I'd done that, or if it was the English weather. I knew we'd have to head inside if it kept raining, so I willed it to stop. As soon as I thought this the rain stopped and there was a blue sky and sunshine. Thanks to the wonderful English weather we hadn't seen the sun in months, yet here it was on an early(ish) October morning. We were all dripping wet at this point, but I said "at least it's stopped raining. I think I did that..."

Everyone was staring at me. "What? I suppose it might have just decided to stop pouring rain down, but I thought that maybe I... Crap. I look like a drowned rat, don't I?"

Annie put a hand on my shoulder. "No dear. WE all look like drowned rats. You do not."

Sure enough, I looked down and my school uniform was bone dry and a lot cleaner than before. I felt really bad for the others who were beginning to shiver. It was then that a bright idea hit me. I held out my hands and imagined the water that was on my friends in my hands. Just like that, they were dry too and I was left holding a ball of water, something that should have been a physical impossibility. I saw Chloe walking past at this point and decided to drop it on her head. I did so and the 6 of us sprinted across the rooftops, laughing like the complete lunatics we are, and hid behind a chimney.

Chapter 8-

5 minutes later and Ed, breathless with laughter, said, "Well, 3 down; 3 to go."

"I am flat out refusing to jump off this roof, guys. Sorry"

"I don't think creating an earthquake on the roof is a very intelligent thing to do."

"Yeah. I don't think the whole black lightning thing is a good idea up here either..."

I tried to think of how to test Annie, Abby and Hope's powers without killing ourselves or anybody else who happened to be walking below. I had some ideas, but whether they'd work, I had no clue. "Hope, if you're like Ed's opposite, could you maybe summon darkness in the same way she does with light?"

She shrugged and pulled a face similar to the one that Ed was pulling before. Those two are so alike in every way that we have often questioned whether or not they are actually twins. They are into all the same things except Ed has short hair and Hope doesn't wear glasses. Sorry, I get so easily distracted it's a wonder that I ever finish anything...

Anyway, while Hope was concentrating (and we were trying not to laugh) the sun went in and ominous black clouds filled the sky. A black haze began to crackle around Hope. The sky was growing darker and darker and I was beginning to feel a little twitchy and nervous. It was as if Hope had sensed this because she opened her eyes and looked really shocked and a little scared. She spun round panic-stricken before clicking her fingers and the day returned to the dreary affair it had been before we started messing with it.

"Wow!" said Ed. "That was pretty cool. I thought I was your polar opposite. I'm pretty sure I can't do anything like that."

"Well, have you tried anything else? I mean besides glowing in the dark. Maybe you can make White lightning..." Annie was waffling on excitedly.

"Omg. That would be so amazing. But just for the record, I did make the sun shine, before Hope ruined it with her stinking, if insanely awesome, darkness power."

"I'm really sorry, but I didn't ask for this to happen. We can't all be so positive and make sunshine and rainbows. Powers of darkness come on. It makes me sound evil and it's scary. I had no idea what was going to happen back there. I honestly thought I was going to hurt someone. I had no control and I'm pretty sure the lightning wasn't too far away..."

"No need to snap at me. Get a grip," said Ed." you're being ridiculous. You think you're the only person who's having issues with this? You're wrong. Were all making this up as we go along."

Hopes face turned murderous. I thought she was about to punch Ed.

"Well me and Annie haven't even tried our powers yet," cried Abby. "We don't even know if we have the damn powers you're getting so upset about. Can we please stay on task and work out our insecurities later. Someone's going to realise were missing sooner or later, so we'd better get this done."

Hope and Ed backed off then, but continued to give each other the evils. I just assumed they'd make it up later. They normally do.

"Ok, ok," I began puzzling again. "Earth is a pretty vague term to use. We know you can do stuff with rocks and the ground, but were not on the ground. Hmm... Oh! What about plants?"

"Plants?"

"Yeah. That's what I thought of when I heard the phrase 'earth power'. Plants come from the earth, so maybe you have something there."

"Well, I suppose it's worth a go." Annie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As we watched, a blanket of grass spread from her feet to cover the whole roof.

Ed lay down on the grass. Let's just say that we were glad she had shorts on under her skirt. "Well this makes the roof a much better place to relax." she closed her eyes and clicked her fingers. The sun burst from behind the clouds and we all smiled. Even Hope.

Abby coughed loudly. "Still not jumping off the roof. Ideas?"

I couldn't be bothered to think of this one too. I'd thought of everybody else and I'd decided that it was somebody else's turn. Plus, I actually couldn't think of a way to try powers if air.

Eventually Grace spoke. "Wind," she said with a smile.

"Please tell me you mean what I hope you mean," called Ed who was still sunbathing on the new grass.

"If you mean wind as in the kind that could blow us off this roof, then yes, you would be right."

"Well, here goes nothing," sighed Abby. She held out her arms and took a deep breath. Suddenly the most powerful wind imaginable Rose up. I instinctively held my skirt down and I was very glad I did. We had to cling onto the nearest chimney to avoid the painful death that comes from falling 5 storeys.

"Whoa. Sorry guys," shouted Abby over the roar if the wind. She let her arms drop to her sides and there was calm again. Abby looked totally unruffled, whereas I was pretty sure my hair looked like a total birds-nest.

"Well, at least we now know that Mr Jameson was telling the truth," grinned Ed who had got up from her sunbathing to avoid getting blown away. "We have unspeakably cool powers and now we supposedly have to save the world to fulfil our roles as guardians. Any ideas what were meant to save the world from?"

We all shook our heads. We'd have to find out when the time came. We heard the bell go for lunch. If we didn't hurry we'd miss the chocolate cake, and that day they were serving the nice stuff which didn't taste suspiciously like bread.

Abby turned to look at the rest of us. She had that expression on her face which meant she was about to do something extremely dim. She said, "You know, now that I know I have powers over air, I have the strange urge to jump off this roof and fly to the lunch hall. Before they start serving bread-cake."

Before we could say anything to stop her, Abby had taken a running jump. There was a small part of me that was waiting for the impending splat that should have followed something like that. However when it didn't come, we ran to the edge, only to see Abby floating about 6 feet down. It was a few moments before she spotted us, but when she did she stuck out her tongue and shouted, "So long suckers!" she dropped the ground and landed on her feet before sprinting off to lunch.

Even though we knew we would never catch up with her, we legged it to the stairs. We were in for a fun time, but we never guessed that something sinister was brewing behind Ed's conjured sunshine.

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><p>Hope you enjoyed it. I'll try to post some more when I get it written. Again, any ideas for titles? I'm really stuck for ideas. Also, please review, its really not that hard. The button is gathering dust and it is very sad. DO YOU WANT TO MAKE THE BUTTON CRY? I didn't think so. Until next time ppl. Xx<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

Ok so here's some more. Thanks to everyone who's reading, because i know at least some people are. But would it KILL you to review? Seriously, its really easy and you dont have to be a member or anything so come on. The button is very sad. It CRIED after it only recieved one review last time (btw, thanks lulu bee)! So make the button happy by reviewing!

In other news, I finish school for summer this week, so I'll probably post a lot more now. Well if you review and I get over my case of the dreaded 'writers block'. Anyway, love you guys! Enjoy!

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><p>Chapter 9-<p>

The weeks that followed were some of the most entertaining of my life. Some of the stuff you can do with elemental powers is truly hilarious.

Fire alarms seemed to be going off a lot more often, thanks to graces magical fire. People also seemed to keep falling over rocks and tree roots that seemed to magically appear. Once during a particularly dull assembly, the headmistress' wig was blown clean off her head. No explanation was ever found. It was also one of the sunniest autumns on record, and it was well into November by the time we finally retreated to the library. It is also very amusing to be the only person who, in a torrential rainstorm, stays dry and does not have to do battle with an umbrella. Occasionally I stopped the rain, but only when I was feeling kind (mwahahahaha).

The only person who hadn't been playing with their new powers was Hope. The events on the roof seemed to have really freaked her out. It didn't look as if she wanted anything to do with magic. Before discovering the real existence of magic, she'd been almost as much of a fantasy lover as me. Now, she was pretending that it wasn't happening, but she had to embrace the awesomeness of magic and powers. We all needed to work on our powers at some point, to get ready to save the world from untold evil, but that could wait. We were having way too much fun messing with people at this point.

The only hard part was carrying on like nothing had changed. In many ways they hadn't. Lessons were still insanely boring, the food was still vile and Chloe Morgan and Libby Rivers were still evil.

Of course lots of things had changed. We had cool powers, we were supposed to save the world and perhaps the strangest thing; Miss Greenwood and Mr Jameson had vanished without a trace and nobody but us remembered them. They had been replaced by the dull and drab Mrs Read and Mr Springwell. At first we thought we were going crazy as everybody else said that they'd been our teachers for the past two years. It was later when we remembered that we had potentially killed Miss Greenwood in the gateway to chaos. However where Mr Jameson had gone was a total mystery.

Half term came and went. We just stayed at school like we do every half term. We only go home at Christmas, Easter and in the summer. This is only because we have to. Our parents probably wouldn't care either way.

It was about six weeks after that crazy night when our powers had been revealed. Nothing remotely interesting had happened in weeks (It turns out there is only so much you can do without getting caught) and we were getting bored.

Somehow the decision was made to sneak out one Saturday night. We headed deep into the woods that surround the school, Ed and Grace lighting the way. When we found a suitably large clearing, we started to try things that we'd never dared to try before. There wasn't the danger of falling off the roof or being found by a random passerby. Lighting, gales and earthquakes ensued in that forest clearing.

We all enjoyed it so much (yes, even Hope was starting to love magic), that it became a weekly thing. Every Saturday night we'd climb (or float in Abby's case) down from the top floor. We had fire to keep us warm and light to guide us. Wind disguised any sound we made and the trees were moved to hide us. Hope could call upon darkness to make us invisible, definitely making our escapes easier. And me? There actually wasn't much I could do. It was discovered much later that my power over water could heal pretty much any injury, but that was much later on and my lack of contribution left me feeling pretty useless in the whole great escape.

Chapter 10-

The weeks started to fly after we started our Saturday escapades. Before we knew it Christmas was upon us. All the festiveness was drawing to a close. Concerts had been performed; parties had been held and Christmas carols had been parodied to near exhaustion.

It was our last night in school before we headed to our separate corners of Britain for the holidays. The weather was forecasting snow and we were waiting with bated breath for the first White flakes to fall.

It got to lights out and we drew the conclusion that the snow wasn't going to come. We decided to head up to the roof for our last night before three weeks of nothingness and a return to school, considerably chubbier and in a state of post-Christmas depression.

Up on the roof, we assembled round a campfire. Somehow Grace had made it so that the fire couldn't burn through the roof but it still kept us warm. You've got to love that. Anyway, just as we were about to give each other our Christmas presents, the heavens opened and it started to pour with rain. I raised my hands, getting ready to stop the rain when a brilliant idea hit me. Snow is just frozen rain, right? So instead of stopping the rain, I willed it to turn into snow and within minutes a thick White blanket had covered the grass that still lay on the roof.

My friends looked up in wonder. I think Annie caught me with an idiotic grin on my face because she came over and asked, "Did you do this?"

I nodded and said, "Merry Christmas, guys!"

We all went slightly hyper after this. We played in the snow for hours, like I said: immature and proud of it. When it got to 4am, we stopped playing. After our epic snow battle, we had finally started to shiver, even with Graces fire. We made our way back inside and fell into bed.

It wasn't until the next day when we realised that we'd forgot about the presents. We had to rush that along with hugs and goodbyes. Playing in snow at 4am has its merits but being able to get up the next day is definitely not one of them. I was glad I'd thought to start packing the night before as the buses that would take us home were lined up outside.

We scrambled out of bed in a daze, shoving the last few things into our cases. I glanced out the window and saw the drivers starting the engines. That definitely started a mini stampede. Then we realised that we couldn't make it down there in time.

Abby flung open the window, filling the room with an icy wind. Before any of us could say a thing, the wind picked up the remaining stuff and shoved into (amazingly) the correct cases. After we'd stopped staring, we began throwing our suitcases out of the window. Then Abby jumped. I kind of wished we could have followed suit, but we couldn't. Instead, Annie made the creeping vines which scaled the wall, into an awesome, if slightly unstable, ladder.

We made it to the buses in the nick of time. Goodbyes and presents were hurriedly exchanged and I for one was exhausted by the time I flopped into my seat. It started to rain as the bus set off for the North-East of England, where more rain was to be expected. We waved manically to each other from the windows of our separate buses, heading to separate corners of the country. Ed was off to Keswick; Hope was going to London; Annie and Abby were heading down south and Grace was next to me. We had carefully selected seats as far away from Chloe as we possibly could.

The seemingly endless rain on the motorway was seriously depressing me. On and on it went. Then I had the same bright idea I'd had the previous night. The snow had only covered the roof then, but I hoped that with enough effort I could make it work on a much larger scale. I wanted a white Christmas, and I hoped that I was going to get it. I closed my eyes and tried to focus, which let me tell you is practically impossible on a bus full of hyper schoolgirls. We'd all eaten way too many haribos. I glanced out the window and sure enough, snow was falling and lying by the roadside. I texted Annie to see how well my plan had worked. Turned out it had, we were in for a White Christmas and I for one couldn't wait.

I smiled. Grace obviously caught sight of my idiotic grin this time and her reaction was similar to Annie's. Suddenly I felt dead tired, evidently making it snow over the whole country took a lot more energy than I'd originally anticipated. I felt myself drifting into sleep and I didn't wake up until we arrived in Durham. Our plan for toasting marshmallows with magical fire whilst on a bus would have to wait 3 weeks.

Chapter 11-

3 weeks later the school was rife with post-Christmas depression. I for one, had eaten way too much chocolate and I was feeling really fat and miserable The high points in my week back were bus ride as marshmallows toasted on a bus without anyone knowing seem to taste so much better; and seeing all my friends again.

Upon our arrival back at Milton we were greeted with a group hug. Yay hugs! It was good to be back again, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. I knew something was off, when Hope asked to switch beds with me. This was really odd, as hope definitely has the best bed. She got it through the instructions on the Becca list; a survival guide Hope's older sister made for her. The only possible reason I could think of for her wanting to switch beds was to avoid either Ed or Abby. It turned out she was avoiding Ed.

They had a HUGE fight over the holidays. It was a comment war on Google buzz which is actually pretty pathetic when you think about it. Either way, there had been a lot of swearing or petty insults which I'm not repeating and they were really pissed off at each other.

I'm not quite sure whether this was a direct result of their fight or not, but the weather was seriously messed up. It went from huge black storm clouds to dazzling sun in seconds, which is extremely bizarre for January in the UK. There was also a hell of a lot of lightning. In black and White.

A small part of me remembered Mr Jameson's words in the gateway world.

"If your friendship becomes unbalanced, the universe does too and chaos may be able to take over." unfortunately my brain didn't listen to that small part of me. It was currently preoccupied with other issues.

It was really stressful trying to stop hope and Ed from killing each other. Trying to keep peace while listening to endless bitching behind people's backs and not take sides is really hard. I was about ready to explode.

Then 2 weeks down the line it all stopped. They were back to being best friends and the universe was (literally) balanced once more. We didn't ask what had happened, we just moved on. As that random song says, "We're the 6 Best Friends That Anyone Could Have; We're the 6 Best Friends That Anyone Could Have; We're the 6 Best Friends That Anyone Could Have And We'll Never ever ever ever Leave Each other!"

Unfortunately the 2 weeks of stress and unbalance had been enough to weaken the borders between realities. I'd had a weird warning about this in a dream, except it was a penguin talking so I didn't take it seriously. We were about to discover the seriousness of the situation for ourselves.

It happened a few days after peace had been restored. We were sitting and laughing round our favourite table up at tuck. I heard a voice behind me that made my blood run cold.

"Girls, what are you doing in here? You know you aren't allowed to stay in at break until year 10!"

I was thinking "oh crap, oh crap!" as I turned around to see the person who I was praying that I'd never see again. I turned to see that diminutive figure that struck fear into the hearts of even the bravest sixth formers. Miss greenwood had returned from the dead. I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen, but then again all sorts of things were happening that weren't supposed to. I'm sure teenage girls aren't supposed to be waterproof or glow in the , Miss Greenwood was back and it was bad news, very bad.

We tried to stay out of her way as much as we possibly could, praying that she wouldn't try to get revenge on us for killing her (not that I'd blame her...) However we were soon going to have to step up our avoidance tactics.

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><p>TA-DA! Please, please, please review! :D :D :D :D<p> 


	5. Chapter 5

Hi! Sorry about the wait, but its summer and i've been away and stuff. I have also been suffering from a bad case of writer's block but dont worry, im (mainly) over it now. Also big hugs to Lulu Bee for reviewing and thanks to anybody else who bothered reading. Enjoy!

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><p>Chapter 12-<p>

One cold January afternoon, we were basking in the glorious sunshine on the tennis courts. Of course we'd made sure that nobody else was around first. I closed my eyes and started drifting off to sleep, my mind at rest for the first time in weeks.

Following the 'big fight' and Miss Greenwoods shock return the nightmares started. The sky would turn red and there would be manic evil laughter. A cold voice would whisper, "Join us, cross the barrier; you are fighting a losing battle, etc." Then a hand would grasp for my throat and I'd wake up screaming. It seemed that Grace and Abby were having a similar experience. Mr Jameson's words also played on my mind. He said that any evil from other realms would come for us at Milton first because we were near the gateway. Was Miss Greenwood a sign of something beginning?

But lying there in the warmth, I let my mind blank and for once I was totally calm and happy. Then something cast a shadow, blocking my sun. That woke me up all right. I was about to start screaming at whoever it was until I saw who it actually was.

We were surrounded by the BCs, our codename for said bitch club. I sighed. The insults and taunting were sure to follow. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

Some of them closed their eyes and there was assorted clicking and hand movements that all seemed to familiar. I finally worked out why when the lightning struck out from Chloe and Libby who were obviously leading this little operation. Looking round it was slightly creepy; they were like the anti-version of us. 6 of them, each 1 with the power over earth, water, fire, air, light or darkness. Exactly the same.

Of course there was the chance that they weren't out to get us and they'd just come over for a friendly chat or to discuss cool powers. That hope disappeared as soon as the first fireball was thrown. From there it launched into a full blown battle combining magic fighting; throwing fire, rocks, ice, and lightning with more conventional girl fighting; slapping, kicking, screaming and hair-pulling.

My remark about them being anti-versions of us was proved pretty accurate. They mirrored our fighting style right down to individual mannerisms. It was seriously weird. However thanks to our Saturday training in the woods and the mini war that was now over we knew exactly how to deal with it. As we beat them up I noticed something that definitely added to the creepy factor. Staring into the eyes of my arch nemesis as I had her pinned to the ground, I noticed that they had a glazed empty look, as if they weren't quite there. They hadn't spoken a word during the whole encounter and they weren't behaving normally. I drew a list of possible conclusions:

1. They were under some kind of spell.

2. Someone or something had possessed them.

3. They had sold their souls to whatever immense evil we were dealing with in exchange for supposedly amazing powers.

Whatever it was, they weren't really in control of their actions and this became clear in a single moment. A flash of what could have been recognition crossed their blank faces for a second and this second was all it took for everything that they were making happen to go completely haywire. Lightning struck wildly, tornadoes tore the tennis courts apart, fire and water swirled through the air and a purple haze of what appeared to be pure magic energy descended.

Back under their weird spell our enemies turned to us once more. Chloe, if I could call her that, broke free from my grip and started to run. I would have chased after her but I was slightly distracted when everything that was flying round swirled together in a vortex of pure magic that began to tear the ground away. Naturally we all moved in and away from the vortex. Making the situation even worse, the people who wanted to kill us seemed to be drawing strength from the chaotic vortex. Crap.

Through the haze I could just make out the others. We were all faced with the same problem; did we keep fighting or stop and deal with the consuming vortex that was threatening to break out of the tennis courts and destroy anything or anyone. No matter what we did something would suffer for whatever we didn't do. If we kept fighting the vortex would go out of control, especially as our magic was feeding it. Of course if we did try to stop the vortex (and how we were going to do that I had no idea) the girls who were trying to kill us might actually succeed. You know, I kind of like being alive.

With this thought, something inside of me just snapped. I was 13 years old. Why was I faced with a life and death decision like this? Why was it me and my friends who had been dropped into this? We had been given powers without being told how to use them and told we had to save the world from the untold evils of chaos. We were making it all up as we went along; I mean there's no book called 'world saving for dummies'. No, we had to work it all out ourselves and the bad guys, whoever they were (we hadn't been told that either) seemed to be one step ahead. Topping off the mess that my life had suddenly become, the one person who had the answers to all our questions (Mr. Jameson if you've been following) had conveniently vanished from the face of the Earth.

I think it's safe to say that I was not a happy bunny. I was fuming, hopping mad. I was angry with my parents for dumping me at this stupid school, with the BCs for being well... I was angry with Mr Jameson for leaving us in this mess, but mostly I was angry with myself. I know it's really pathetic but I broke down and started to sob uncontrollably. Suddenly I noticed a change in the air; the vortex was swirling faster, fuelled by my emotions. Somehow this made me cry harder; I know I'm such a freak.

Then I felt someone shaking me and screaming, "Get a grip Blair Marianna Robson! We need your smartosity to stop the vortex and the BCs. We can't do this without you. Snap out of it!" Ed slapped me across the face. Hard. That brought me back to normal.

"Thank you Edwina Annabeth Barras." now that I was thinking clearly, I saw a possible way to stop the vortex and the BCs. I stretched out my arms and tried to draw the water and some of the magic energy out of the vortex. Of course I really didn't think my plan through properly and I realised this as several tinned of water cane crashing towards me. I shut my eyes in sheer terror and prepared for the worst. I didn't think I was going to make it.

"Oh. My. God." Annie's voice carried above the howling wind on the vortex. I swear her life ambition is to be heard on the moon.

After working out that I wasn't dead, I gingerly opened one eye. Everything was distorted as if I was looking through water. Then it clicked; I was. I was surrounded by several tonnes of water that were forming a protective warrior avatar form thingy that was 20 feet tall. I was also dry (nothing new there) and I could breathe (definitely new). The vortex had also slowed up a little as 1/6 of its power had been drained.

"I want one," said Annie sounding slightly envious and kind if whiny.

"How did you do that" asked Hope, practical as always.

I shrugged, and my giant form did too. I tried moving around, any movement I made was mirrored. The only problem was my movements were pretty slow as they are in water. Either way, it was pretty cool. Then I realised Hope actually wanted an answer to her question.

"Draw anything you can from the vortex and will it to help. You need to focus though or it'll fall to pieces."

There was a series of nods and a moment later Grace burst into flames. 20 feet of flames to be precise. Within minutes there were 6 20 foot magic warriors on the tennis courts. For once we were all the same height much to Annie's delight (she's quite short despite insisting she's 'average height ') and Ed's disgust (she likes being freakishly tall). There was also no more vortex as we'd absorbed all its energy. The tennis courts had been totally torn apart though. I desperately hoped we wouldn't be blamed.

"I shall name my immensely cool warrior form Sybil, because Sybil is an awesome name," declared Ed her light form a little too bright to look at.

"Mines called Bob!" called Abby.

"Hey people," said Grace. "Have you forgotten about the BCs?"

I turned as quickly as I could; only to see them slumped in a corner. I worked it out; they'd created the vortex to keep us busy but the effort had wiped them out.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see a group of people coming up the path. I began to panic, but then I saw who it was. Miss Greenwood was on the warpath, in all her freaky bat wing glowing eyes finery. She was carrying a very big knife. Out of the bushes behind her melted an army of similar creatures. They were coming for us.

I was exhausted after our last battle and would have happily run away. Of course I was surrounded by 20 feet of water and I had no clue how to get rid of it. Suddenly I heard a voice whisper, "your power lies within you. Let it in..." somehow I managed to absorb several tonnes of water into my very being. I don't know where I put it.

The others must of heard the voice too because soon we were all back to normal and sprinting for our room.

Chapter 13

Once inside, we locked the door behind us and enforced it with vines, rocks and ice. Nobody was getting in. Once we were sure of this we had a mini-conference in whispers. Afternoon lessons would be starting soon and someone would miss us.

Hope began. "As much as I love school, I don't think it's safe here."

We all nodded in agreement.

"Mr Jameson said that anything evil coming from other worlds would come for us here first. I don't know about you guys, but I think we need to get as far away from here as we can. I don't want to fight for my life like that every day."

I was about ready to drop at this point and I knew the others were too. I was going to suggest we took a nap before fleeing the school. After all, it would be way easier to sneak out in the end of day rush. I sat down on my bed and closed my eyes. I was just drifting off to sleep when I heard Grace screaming.

There was a knife sticking through the door and I could hear the muffled voice of Miss Greenwood saying, "Let me in little pigs." Just what was she suggesting?

I was on my feet in seconds. I think I was the only person who'd kept my head. Everyone else was screaming hysterically. I suppose id had my hysterical moment earlier. It was a pretty big knife though.

Anyway, I splashed my hysterical friends with some freezing water (like you see in movies) and they came out of it. Then it was action stations. We repeated several of our old tricks to get out as fast as we possibly could.

Abby made all the essential stuff fly into our rucksacks and we pooled together all the money we could find (£70 in case you were wondering). When we were ready, we exited via the window like on Saturdays. On the way out there began a pounding on the door, but we were gone before it could fly off its hinges.

As we were sprinting through the school grounds I had a bright idea. We turned on to main corridor just as the bell rang for last lesson. The corridor was full of girls in identical, if slightly more tidy school uniforms (you can't blame us; we'd just fought a battle so our clothes were slightly grubby and ripped). We blended into the crowd and tried not to get squished against any Walls (it happens). On the way past we slipped into the D of E cupboard and nicked off with a tent, sleeping bags and other camping supplies. Then we jumped out another window and ran into the woods under the cover of Hopes darkness/invisibility.

In the woods I thought of something. We'd have to lose our school uniform; you could see the bright red from miles away. Ed was all for burning them, but Hope pointed out that we might need them in the event that we came back. In the end we buried them in our practice clearing and changed into some of the clothes from our bags. Then we started to walk.

Round here you have Milton School, and Milton village about a kilometre away. Then there is nothing but fields and woods for about 40 miles in any direction. We didn't really know where we were going, so we decided to walk to the nearest town and make plans there. We would camp out wherever we'd got to until then. So we set off.

After about a week we began to get sick of each other. It was freezing, as January is; we were tired of walking; we were running out of food and some people can be really annoying when they're bored.

We call Ed, Annie and Grace the queens of YouTube. They have seen practically every funny/annoying song and to make matters worse they know ALL the words. Naturally it was only a matter of time before they started. Annie kicked it off:

"Chew gum and stick it on a tree, tree.

Just kidding that gum's for me, me.

I'm going on a killing spree, spree.

Ouch! I shot my knee."

She was abruptly silenced by a series of hackies. Of course 5 minutes later Ed continued with the annoyance:

"Do you like waffles? Yeah we like waffles.

Do you like pancakes? Yeah we like pancakes.

Do you like French toast? Yeah we li-"

More hackies. At that point I nearly cried. I LOVE French toast and I was starving. Eggy bread is one of the best breakfasts they serve at Milton and they were serving it that day. We walked in stony silence for about 10 minutes until Grace started singing too:

"There's a cat, meow, Flushing the toilet. There's a cat, meow, flushing the toilet. There's a-"

Hope spun round. "Will you shut up? Do you have any idea how annoying that is?"

Grace clammed up then, but Ed couldn't take the hint so she kept going;

"Oh banana massacarna dodododo. Oh banana massacarna dodododo."

Abby was beginning to get annoyed at this point as was I, but I wasn't going to say anything. God job Abby did. "Shut up!" she screamed. "We have been on the run for a week now. I'm cold, tired, and hungry and you 3 are getting on my last nerve. It is 9am on a Friday morning. Put a sock in it!" unfortunately she didn't realise what she'd said. I saw it coming when all 3 Queens of YouTube burst into a very loud chorus: "It's Friday, Friday, Gotta get down on Friday,

Everybody's looking forward to the weekend,

Friday, Friday, getting down on Friday,

Partying, partying, yeah!

Partying, partying, ye-"

There was an almighty crack of black lightning. Fortunately nobody was fried this time (it happens). However there was a nasty patch of burnt grass about 20cm from Annie.

"Jeez, I'm sorry!" she said Sounding slightly scared. "I'll stop with the singing. I'll tell you a story instead. A duck story!" then she launched into a rendition of the duck song, complete with duck walk. I'll admit it, at this point I caved. I began to laugh uncontrollably. I'm sorry but the duck walk is pretty funny. Unfortunately Hope and Abby just didn't see that. They looked like they wanted to fry Annie and launch her to America. That is until Annie played her trump card: the sinister elf. It's a weird dance that makes everybody laugh so much. Within 30 seconds we were all killing ourselves laughing, despite the circumstances and we remained completely creased for the next hour.

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><p>Hope you enjoyed that. If you did REVIEW. It's not hard, you dont even have to have an account. Please, the button is crying; it is dusty and dejected... I'll post more soon. xx<p> 


	6. Chapter 6

Hey everyone! Im back with the next part. Big thanks and virtual hugs to Lulu Bee and Moment4Life and Ax for reviewing. It's great to know what you guys think! Virtual hugs to anyone else who read it too! Luv you guys and I hope you enjoy the next part just as much. xx

Chapter 13-

Once the laughter had died down, we saw a sight that made us practically jump for joy. There was a sign saying Bridge Hill- 2miles. This was the first sign of civilisation we'd seen in a week so we were pretty happy. Of course then something happened to kill the mood, as it always does. There was a figure standing under the sign; a figure that I recognised all too well. Mr Jameson was back too, and I had a bone to pick with him.

He came towards us and I could see that he looked even worse than we did. He was even grubbier and more battered looking, not to mention the spectacular black eye and cut lip. Of course being the idiot I am, the first thing I did was march up to him and give him a smack in the face.

"God Blair," he gasped. "What did you do that for?"

I wasn't happy, so I let him have it:"Well you told us to save the world, then left us to discover magic powers and how exactly to save the world (still working on it by the way) alone for 3 months without so much as a word. What have you been doing all this time? We've been practising, keeping up with school, oh yeah and we were attacked by forces of chaos and forced to flee for our lives."

"Umm, sorry but I've been pretty busy too. I can't go into the details as it comes from a higher office. Besides, I'm here now aren't I?"

He had a point but I wasn't about to tell him that. Turns out I didn't have to, as he continued talking.

"Now girls, I have something for you. You powers alone have proven adept at disposing of chaos creatures so far-"

"What?" Annie interrupted. She's good at that. "Miss Greenwood came back to get us, and the BCs on the tennis court wiped out on their own"

Mr Jameson gave her hackies that topped even Abby's. "Yes and that proved adept. But soon you will have to face even worse so these may be useful."

He conjured up 6 leather sheaths with our names on. I was glad he was finally showing some interest. It had been a long 3 months. Anyway I looked inside and drew out a sword. Yes, a sword and let me tell you, it was HEAVY. It was nice though. It had a stone in the hilt that was a gorgeous sea blue and the blade had a wave pattern engraved. It seemed perfect.

The others had swords too. Grace's had a fiery red stone and a flame pattern; Annie had a green stone and a vine pattern; Abby had a clear, diamond-y stone and a swirly pattern; Hope's was darkest black and Ed's glowed with light.

Ed grinned at me and we both thought back to an especially boring school trip last year. Wed bought these wooden swords in the gift shop that still came out on occasion for mock sword Fights. Of course now that we had the real thing, I was slightly scared. We actually didn't have a clue how to use swords apart from whatever we'd seen in books and movies.

Mr Jameson's voice interrupted my train of thought: "but you must remember these aren't toys. You can do serious damage with these bad boys so don't try them on each other."

Reluctantly I put my sword away and strapped it round my waist. Then Mr Jameson kept going. It was slightly bizarre that he'd show up like this after 3 months; and here, in the middle of a field! "Now I know Hope has developed her secondary powers but what about the rest of you?"

Hope looked confused. "Secondary powers? What are you talking about?"

Mr Jameson looked amused. "Your invisibility?"

A look of realisation dawned on Hopes face. Ed pointed a finger at her and said, "So that's where you went when you were sucked down the black hole in the PE cupboard!" I smiled as I remembered our weird theory.

"Anyone else?" asked Mr. Jameson.

I then saw Annie giving Hope a weird look. Then she burst out, "No! You don't fancy Greg! Greg Brandon? Oh my god." hope was bright red at this point. Annie hadn't been told about it because of her tendency to blurt out supposed secrets. Fortunately Mr. Jameson intervened. "Ah mind reading," he sighed. "That's going to be fun"

Ed jaw dropped nearly to the floor. "Why?" she asked. "Why can Annie now read minds? Ah crap. It's going to be the book thing all over again. But worse."

"Mwahahahaha!" laughed Annie.

Mr Jameson looked slightly frightened by that, but he continued with his spiel. "Now you must know that these powers will be harder to control than your initial elements. You may hear more than you would like to or find yourself disappearing involuntarily."

"Yeah," said Annie. "I didn't want or need to know that you were wearing teddy bear boxers. That's slightly disturbed."

It was then Mr Jameson's turn to go bright red.

"And speaking of disappearing," continued Hope. "Has anyone seen Abby and Ed?"

I was sure that they'd been standing next to me, but when I turned they weren't there. Moments later, we heard a shriek as Abby fell out of a tree on the other side of the field. She began limping back over.

"How did she get over there?" I asked, slightly gobsmacked.

"Teleportation," came Mr. Jameson's reply. I think he was still embarrassed.

"What about Ed?"

"Down here fellow freaks!" came a squeaky reply. The words seemed to have come from a blondish squirrel that was sitting in the middle of the path.

Grace nudged me and whispered, "Did that squirrel just talk?"

"Yes, dipstick. It's me, Ed!"

"What?"

"Shape-shifter," Mr Jameson Smiled at the sight of squirrel-Ed. "You should be able to do other animals too."

"Good to know, but how do I get back to normal?"

"Visualise exactly what you were before and you should come back to it."

"Already tried it. Any other suggestions?"

"You should turn back when you run out of energy to keep it up."

Ed scowled which looked immensely cute if slightly odd on her squirrel face.

"Anyway, Blair you should have healing powers. I think they haven't been displayed as you haven't had need."

Grace snorted from behind me. "You're kidding right? The girl who failed her brownies first aid badge has magic healing powers. I really hope I don't get hurt."

"It's true," I agreed. "I tend to make things worse rather than better..."

"Yes, but things will be different now. Here, fix Abby's ankle. It looks broken."

Abby had finally limped back across the field and was now looking slightly scared. "Are you sure that's a Good idea Mr Jameson?" she asked.

"Just do it, Blair," he sounded like he was beginning to lose patience. So I sat down and put my hands on Abby's ankle. I could feel the break and willed it to fix. Under my hands I could actually feel the bones knitting back together. After about a minute I stopped. Abby tried standing up and her ankle was perfectly fine.

"Wow," she was amazed as was I. I normally failed at this sort of thing so to find that I could fix broken bones was pretty cool. I tried to heal some of the cuts and bruises that I'd acquired over the past week too (some in the fight and some from particularly vicious trees and those pesky invisible bushes that trip people up). Amazingly that also worked. Soon everyone was patched up and as good as new. Then Mr Jameson turned to Grace. "Your power may be a little later in developing than the others," he began. "You should have the sight; visions of the past, present or future."

Grace nodded. She looked slightly worried and a little ill as well. I thought she might faint and I wasn't sure if I could cure that.

Of course Mr. Jameson didn't notice and he kept talking, "In addition to this you should also have enhanced speed, strength and stamina. Now, these pendants should keep you safe (he gave us all a pendant which was a similar design to the swords) and I'm sorry to say that I have to go now, so good luck."

With that, he turned and started to walk away. When he reached the cover of the woods he broke into a run and soon he was gone. Id considered running after him using this enhanced speed I was supposed to have, but I got slightly distracted by Ed and grace.

There was a loud pop, and Ed was back to normal. "Next time I see that guy," she pointed in the direction Mr Jameson had headed. "I will do what Blair did and smack him. Or maybe I'll just show him what this sword can do." then there was a hollow thunk noise and we turned to see grace sprawled on the ground in a dead faint.

I didn't know what had happened to make her faint. I splashed water on her face to try and make her come round. It actually worked! She sat bolt upright and said, "we can't trust him. Mr Jameson, I mean. I just had a weird vision. He's going to betray us. I don't know when, but it's going to happen."

"Maybe we should get out of here," I was slightly worried. "Who knows where he went."

"Where do you want to go?" asked Abby. This worried me even more. I could guess what she was thinking and I didn't like it.

Fortunately, Hope spoke for me. "You can't teleport us all back to someone's house! It's supposed to be hard to control. You just fell out of a tree and broke your ankle. You could kill us, or leave parts of us behind. I do not want to be splinched Abigail Georgia Blakefield. No!"

Abby looked slightly sad. Then there was rustling in the trees behind us. I could hear the heavy breathing of the chaos demons and I could just make out their glowing eyes. Ed saw them too because she screamed really loudly.

I tried to make an ice barrier to stop them getting through like I'd done sometimes when we were practicing, but nothing happened. My powers were failing, leaving me at the mercy of the beasts.

I was screaming too. "Abby, just do it! Teleport us out of here!"

We all held on to each other and suddenly we were freefalling through a void. There was nothing around us; we were just falling forever until I landed on my back on a stone floor. I could hear Annie groaning in pain somewhere behind me. I turned, and it was really horrible. Her arm was all bloody and mangled. It was sliced to ribbons in places and it was nearly cut off at her shoulder. I honestly thought I was going to be sick.

I got ready to try my healing thing but again, nothing happened. I was really starting to panic. Luckily (I think...) Annie didn't see how bad it really was before she passed out from the agonising pain she must of been in.

Then I heard a crack. Hope had smacked Abby really hard across the face; I think she drew blood. This came as a shock because hope is normally a really calm person and is pretty opposed to violence. However now she was screaming at Abby, "You idiot! I told you not to do it. I knew someone was going to get hurt. Have you seen your best friend? You splinched her!"

Abby was shouting back. "I had to! There were at least 30 of those things in the woods and Blair's powers failed. Mine are gone too! They went during the freefall. I thought we were going to keep going forever but we didn't. Something saved us."

I decided to interrupt. "Abby, where were you trying to get us?"

"Um, Ed's place in Keswick."

"Have you seen where we are instead?"

"I lost my powers mid teleport! It's not my fau-"

The silence was deafening as we realised where we were. We saw the familiar dark corridor with slimy walls and doors branching off. We were back in the gateway to chaos.

Chapter 14

"No," said Ed in disbelief. "What's this, another test? Is there more?"

"Somehow I doubt it. We're stuck this time because our powers are failing. At least mine and Abby's are. And Annie's unconscious so we can't really tell."

Hope was still angry with Abby, but at the moment when the lightning should have come, there was nothing yet again. Grace was clicking into a frenzy but there wasn't as much as a spark. Ed laughed and lit up. Then there was another pop and she turned into a turtle. "Aw, come on!" she shouted. "A turtle? Oh crap. My powers are gone now too. I can't turn back!"

I tried to remember how we'd escaped the gateway last time. Wed wiped out after beating miss greenwood and we'd woken up in the white office. I could only assume that it had been Mr. Jameson. To be perfectly honest I didn't think he was going to save us this time, and even if he did I didn't want his help.

Of course us being us, things went from bad to worse. One of the doors creaked open and we were sucked inside. It was pitch dark and we couldn't see a thing, not even each other. Soon our eyes got used to the darkness and we could make out the room. It was pretty small and there were no windows; even the door had disappeared. I went over to a wall and sat down. It looked like we were going to be there a while.

Then, what looked like red smoke came through the wall. It was a bit more substantial than smoke though because it moved through the room chaining all of us to the wall (except Annie who wasn't going to wake up anytime soon) and formed a cage round turtle Ed.

"Awww! Not fair!" she shouted. It echoed weirdly in the room that I was now thinking of as our prison cell. Our arms and legs were clamped to the wall so we couldn't move. That was a bit of a problem as my nose was really starting to itch.

Also the weird smoky stuff that had imprisoned us seemed to be sapping our strength. I don't know how long it was before I eventually fell asleep. I dozed fitfully on and off for I don't know how long. It could have been hours, days or maybe weeks. Time seemed to pass weirdly in the gateways worlds anyway.

Eventually I woke up because I heard something or someone moving in the room. Thinking it might be Annie coming round, I tried to open my eyes. It was a real struggle, so much energy had been drained. There was a figure in the room. He looked kind of like a death eater from Harry Potter in a black robe and freaky skull-like mask. i gave him my best hackies, which thinking about it was probably not that scary...

"What do you want?" I asked, surprised at how weak and croaky my voice sounded.

He gave an evil laugh. "I came to see how you girls were bearing up. Unfortunately your still alive, even with your powers bound and your energy being sapped by pure chaos evil."

"Why are you keeping us here? What did we ever do to you?"

"Well its in your job description as guardians, to stop our side from taking over. If we stop you doing your job, we can take over Earth. I mean you've seen the gateway, the rest of chaos isnt exactly pretty."

Then he was gone. Thinking about it, his voice sounded familiar, although i was pretty sure i had no idea who he was. I began to doze again, but I don't know how long for. Next time I woke up I heard a groan. Ed poked her head out of her little turtle shell. She must have felt at least as bad as I did if not worse.

"Last time I EVER turn into a turtle," her voice was as weak and croaky as mine. "I think there's something wedged in this shell. It's seriously uncomfortable." Then she went back into her shell. I thought she was going back to sleep so I closed my eyes. Just as I was slipping back under I heard Ed shouting again. "No. It's that stupid pendant Mr Jameson gave us. Fat lot of good that did, keeping us safe. We've been captured by the bad guys for crying out loud! I don't want or need his help." She started chewing through the cord on the pendant. Eventually it snapped and clattered against the floor. As soon as it was off, the turtle began to grow. Soon Ed was standing in the cage which had grown to fit her new size. It would have been funny if it hadn't.

Ed seemed stronger now, and she whipped out her sword and sliced through the smoky stuff. We grinned at each other. The pendants had bound our powers. It seemed that the betrayal Grace had seen had already happened. Ed cut me free then, and we sorted out the others. Then we destroyed the pendants in the best way we know how. Our thoughts then turned to getting out of the gateway. Teleportation seemed the best way, but after last time Hope was a bit unsure. Actually, a bit is understatement of the century. But we didn't really have much choice and our powers weren't going to randomly fail on us this time.

So, we grabbed Annie, who was still out for the count and we were away. A minute later, we were back at the signpost for Bridge Hill. We lay Annie down on the grass, and I sorted out her arm. I don't know how long we'd been trapped but it seemed to have gotten infected. It was extremely hard not to throw up as I sorted it out. It was eventually over and Annie sat up and puked everywhere. Then she grinned and said, "Did we beat them?"

I grinned back; glad she was ok and said, "Yeah, we beat them."

Then I realised how hungry I was. It must have been days. Then Abby came out of the woods, carrying our backpacks. I grabbed mine and rooted through until I found my last chocolate bar. This may sound mean, but there was no way on earth I was sharing. When it was gone I turned to the others who'd managed to find food too.

"What do we do now?" I asked. "We can't exactly keep running. They found us once, they can do it again."

Nobody said anything. Grace shut her eyes and screwed up her face; she was having another vision. Luckily she didn't pass out this time. "We need answers," she began. "And we can get them in the other gateway. The one with the White office where we woke up."

"We can't teleport between realms. I just know it. I don't know how we got in the gateway to chaos, but it wasn't me. Well have to find another way in to the other gateway."

Grace had a knowing look on her face, but she didn't look too happy about it. "We know where the entrances to the gateways are. They're somewhere in Milton. We were told they were close and anything would come for us there first which, granted, is why we left in the first place. I think the entrance to the chaos gateway is in Miss Greenwood's cupboard, which is how we ended up in the gateway from detention. The question is, where's the other one?"

That detention seemed so long ago now, when we'd been wishing for something to happen. I agreed with Grace though and with grim determination said, "Were going back to school."

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><p>Thats all for now! please remember to R&amp;R xx<p> 


	7. Chapter 7

Hi guys! Once again much virtual love and hugs to Lulu Bee and Moment4Life and Ax and also no account no problem. Your reveiws made me happy! I'm so glad you think its good. So here's some more for all you lovely people!

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><p>Chapter 15-<p>

"Fine, but it took a week's walking to get to here. I'm not walking back."

I smiled. "We don't need to. It'll take a second with Abby's teleporting." And it did. Within a minute we were back in the woods and I felt really safe, more than I had in ages. Then we realised we had a little bit of a problem. We had no idea which tree we'd buried our school uniforms under. We exchanged blank looks. After all we couldn't really dig up the while forest.

Then Annie started pacing. After a few minutes she kicked off her shoes (a bit odd considering it was winter and absolutely freezing) and continued to pace in bare feet. Eventually she stopped and raised her arm. The ground moved until our hideous red school uniforms were visible, albeit caked in mud at the bottom of a hole. It then took a combination of water, wind and fire to get them looking remotely presentable.

Hope then made us all invisible as we slipped through our form room window into the end of day rush. I never thought I'd miss it, but being on the run and imprisoned in a different world can really change your opinion. I was really worried that someone would see us reappear and demand to know where we'd been but nobody batted an eye. They didn't even acknowledge that we were there (nothing new really, but you'd think after disappearing for at least a week...) I looked around the classroom and my heart sank when I saw the date, 3rd march. Wed been gone for more than a month, at least 3 weeks spent trapped in the gateway. Wed missed half term (granted we were staying at school anyway. None of us really get on with our parents...) but there was something else that made me feel like crying.

Grace came over and put her arm round me. "For what it's worth," she whispered. "Happy Birthday!"

I smiled back. Coming back to school in desperation to find a magic portal was a pretty sucky way to spend a birthday but it wasn't the worst one I've ever had. We then proceeded to make a plan.

In everybody else's minds we'd never been gone. They could see us so searching the school was probably not the best thing to do in broad daylight when we could be caught. We couldn't really use Hopes invisibility to search as we needed to be in contact and it would fail. We decided to return to our room and go for tea when the bell went. We would then search for the gateways after lights out.

When we got up to our room we were in for a shock. It had been completely desecrated. Furniture was smashed to pieces, clothing was ripped to shreds. Miss Greenwood and her demon buddies must have broken through the door and searched the room. They would not have been happy to find out that we'd vanished from the face of the earth. Weirdly enough, we hadn't seen her in the hour we'd been back. She was always prowling around main corridor somewhere, but not today. The BCs were back to normal as well. I'd been rammed into a Locker as they ran away cackling and gossiping. To be honest I'm not sure if it was a good thing they were no longer possessed.

Dinner was amazing. The food was horrendous, possibly even worse than usual, but it was still the best meal I'd ever had, probably because it was my first hot meal in a month. I'm still not quite sure how we went 3 weeks in the gateway, without food or water.

After dinner we slipped back into normal school routine as far as we possibly could; only we didn't go to bed at lights out. After rummaging through the wreckage of our room we found some black clothes that weren't too badly ripped. We slipped them on and snuck out. Ed lit the way and we headed to main corridor. It was decided that room 4, Miss Greenwood's room, would be a good place to start. We were going to test Graces theory about the entrance to the chaos gateway being located there. Of course, our previous experiences with the gateway entrances all seemed to involve unconsciousness and getting literally sucked in. Not fun.

We stood around the cupboard door. It seemed to fit that the gateway would be in here; nobody had ever been allowed in the cupboard and Miss Greenwood would spend bizarre amounts of time in there. I was nominated to open the door, and so I gripped the handle and swung it open.

I had my eyes shut (I'm a BIG wimp when it comes to scary), but I opened them when I heard Ed saying, "That's it? Seriously?"

The forbidden cupboard was empty, apart from a few textbooks and ordinary school stuff. Everything was caked in thick dust, but there was nothing that could be a gateway. This meant we had absolutely nothing to go on and we'd have to search the whole school for 2 gateways. However just as I turned to leave the cupboard, Abby blocked my way. She said, "wait 2 minutes," and sent out a wind that blew all the dust off everything. Then I saw it.

On the back wall, there was a symbol painted in red. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before and my best guess is some kind of ancient rune. I could feel power surging from it and I was pretty sure we'd found the first gateway. The only question was, how did it work?

Abby worked it out first and she walked up to it and placed her hands on part of the design that I'd only just realised were handprints. A section of the wall crumbled to reveal a portal. There was lots of the smoky red pure chaos swirling inside it but before anyone or anything could go in or come out of the gateway grace shouted, "Nulaivu Mutavum!" I have no idea what that means but it's probably something along the lines of 'close the entrance' because that's exactly what happened. The bricks returned to the wall and even the dust resettled, almost obscuring the gateway symbol from view.

Ed looked slightly gobsmacked. "Where the hell did that come from?" she demanded.

Grace looked slightly baffled herself when she replied, "It just came to me. I think it's my sight."

"Cool, will your sight tell us where the other one is?"

"Um, I don't think so. It just kind of comes and goes, usually at inconvenient moments. I can't really control it. Just like you can't control your shape shifting and randomly turn in to cute animals."

"Damn."

"Guys," Hope interrupted. "I have an idea." weirdly enough I had the exact same idea, Hope was just faster. "Miss Greenwood always liked to be near her gateway; she always seemed to be in room 4. What are the odds that Mr Jameson was exactly the same? Where would we be most likely to find him?"

I remembered that he had a little office, not much bigger than the cupboard we were currently squished in, somewhere in the building. I told the others and we raced off to find it.

Everything in the office was caked in dust. It didn't look like anyone had been in since Mr. Jameson nicked off in the autumn.

After a few minutes we found the symbol. It was gold and had been discreetly incorporated into a weird swirly abstract painting. Abby opened it up and we stood before the portal, only this time it was swirling gold and I was getting a good feeling. The six of us linked arms and walked through, hoping we'd eventually find what we were searching for.

Chapter 16-

Seconds later we stepped into the White office. Like the chaos gateway it was exactly as we remembered it. Behind us we heard a voice say, "Yay! You guys are finally here!"

Then another voice said, "Yeah, sorry it took so long. We banned teleporting in after Dennis betrayed us for chaos."

I'm slightly to say that I was a little paranoid at random strangers talking to us like that so I whirled round to face them, sword drawn.

Just a random thought; how had nobody noticed us walking round school with full sized swords strapped round our waists? Wed kept them on just in case. Again, weird...

Anyway I found myself pointing my sword at two girls sitting on the desk. They looked about a year older than us and they were extremely pretty. I'm not normally that shallow, but I felt slightly jealous. The girl who'd spoken last had pale skin, ice blue eyes and sheets of glossy straight black hair. The other one had a tan that suggested she came from somewhere with lush weather (i.e., NOT England), chocolate brown eyes and slightly wild blonde curls. I realised I was staring and still pointing a sword at them, so I hastily rammed the sword away and looked at the floor.

The blonde one jumped of the desk and squished us all, including her friend, into a massive group hug. "By the way, I'm Jestein and that's Hallie!" she squeaked pointing at the black haired girl.

Annie was the first one to find her voice. "If you don't mind me asking," she began. "Who exactly are you?"

Hallie spoke this time. She seemed to be the quieter of the two. "Well, we're your new protectors. Dennis' replacement since he sucked at the job even before he changed sides."

"You keep going on about Dennis. That's not Mr. Jameson's first name is it?" asked Hope.

"Yeah Dennis Jameson, ex protector and all round annoying, slimy little..."

She was interrupted by Ed's sniggering. "Dennis? Who's called Dennis? It's like Larry, only Larry is a way more awesome name."

"Ok...?"

"So what exactly are protectors supposed to do?" I asked. "Because I'm pretty sure Mr. Jameson didn't do any of it."

"Well," Jestein looked like she was thinking. "We explain to you all about the guardianship and help you train your powers and generally try to protect you from dying. Think of us as like guardian angels."

Hope seemed to be thinking too. After a few seconds she said, "Not to be rude or anything, but you don't look that much older than us. How exactly are you going to protect us? You can't know that much more than us."

Hallie and Jestein burst out laughing and it was several minutes before they stopped. None of us had any idea what was so funny but eventually Hallie paused for breath. "You'd be surprised at just how much we know."

"Guys were 500 years old!" laughed Jestein. That was slightly mind blowing information. I think my chin might have hit the ground.

I heard Ed's voice behind me, "Holy crap." she has such a way with words.

Hallie smiled, "We look 14 because we choose to. We're immortals from the other side of the gateway. We can look however we choose, well within reason." Her form then began to shift and ripple, and she became a little girl with red hair in bunches. Then the little girl began to age until a gnarled old lady was sitting in her place. She screwed up her face and turned back into her eternally teenage self.

Jestein took over talking, "I think you'll find that were perfectly qualified to be your protectors. How do you think nobody noticed you were gone from school? We can influence the mortal world in several ways. Now down to business; what exactly do you know about the current situation from Jameson?"

I really had to think about that one, "um, not a lot. He told us that were guardians with powers over natural forces and we have to save the world from untold evil. Then he vanished for three months and he showed up again, Told us about secondary powers, gave us swords and pendants and ran off again. He also betrayed us because the pendants bound our powers and trapped us in the chaos gateway for 3 weeks."

"Ok, we'll just start from the very beginning. It's a very good place to start."

And we all burst into song.

Chapter 17-

"Ok," we were sitting on assorted beanbags and armchairs in the corner. "Everything about everything. There are three worlds, at least that we know of. They are the immortal realms, our realm and chaos, and the mortal world. The immortal realms can influence yours. Kindness and good luck come from our realm and everything bad comes from chaos. It's a vicious circle though as all the chaos in your world today: war, terrorism, pollution; its making chaos stronger. This is bad. Very bad."

"As a general rule, the worlds don't mix directly. There are gateway worlds linking them which you already know. Immortals can access the mortal realm, but mortals can't get to the immortal realms, only the gateways. Only a select few from each world have this right though. The protectors, the guardians and the frite; the 3 groups are also known as triversers. If chaos gets enough strength, they will be able to bend these rules and all their forces will amass in the mortal world as opposed to just the misery spreading frite."

"This is where you guys come in. You are the guardians. You have to stop chaos getting through. If they break the laws of nature the whole universe could fall apart."

"But why us?" hope asked. "Why are we the guardians and not anyone else?"

"We don't know."

"You don't?"

"No. Not for definite. There's a theory though. Because everyone with the ability to cross worlds has other gifts, such as your powers and our abilities to morph and influence mortals. Only triversers can do these things. It is believed that this is because we have a unique source if power within us, a magical core if you prefer. This is a completely random selection from every generation but triversers can always find each other. This is potentially part of why you're such good friends and how you all came together at Milton. The most important thing is that whatever happens the power inside you will always be a part of you and even before your full powers developed there have been traces. Even when you have to blend back in with normality, and that day will come, there will still be traces. You are the gateway guardians until the next generation show up and you need to save the world like all your predecessors."

"You know," said Grace. "It never occurred to me that there were guardians in previous generations or that there would be afterwards. Can't we talk to any of these ex-guardians?"

Hallie and Jestein remained stonily silent.

Throughout all the explanation something had been on my mind. I had to say something. "This is all really useful information and I really wish we'd learned this about 5 months ago. One thing though, everyone keeps telling us that we need to stop chaos, and I understand why. They are not nice people. But nobody will tell us, when, where or how to defeat untold evil. We can't do it without knowing anything."

Hallie smiled, but she looked kind of sad. "Each generation has a prophecy entailing what will happen. How you interpret yours is up to you."

At this point Grace collapsed, similar to the first time she had a vision. I'd thought she was over that. Then her form stiffed and she sat bold upright, her eyes glowing in a really freaky way. My first thought was that she'd been possessed, and I've seen possessed people so I know. My hand automatically flew to my sword but Jestein swatted it away. Then grace began to speak, but it wasn't her voice. It sounded ancient and all knowing, and seemed tripled, like 3 people were talking together. Freaky. The words were even more haunting though:

"The six shall rise in the thirteenth year,

The strongest must battle the strongest yet,

And the road will be hard, twisting unexpectedly,

But as the journey nears its end,

They must lose to win,

Their sacrifice will save us all."

"That would be your prophecy," said Jestein. "Do with it what you will. It's going to come true though. It's already started."

I must have looked confused because Hallie began to explain, "You guys are obviously the six and your powers have surfaced in the year you all turned 13. Chaos is at its strongest and you are the most powerful guardians to date. Ever. And so far you definitely haven't had an easy time. That leaves the ending."

Those last two lines went round and round in my brain. I thought and thought but I could only see one way that the prophecy could be fulfilled.

Across the room the conversation had pretty much stopped. Grace was back to normal and everyone was sitting looking very awkward. Hallie and Jestein kept glancing at each other as if they were hiding something and my friends faces seemed to be saying, "Well what now?" And to be honest, I didn't know. We knew probably as much as were going to, but the worst part was that we didn't know when we were going to have the big showdown against chaos. The whole thing was so vague. Not that I wanted it to come any time soon, if what I thought was going to happen was. It would be amazing though if things could go back to the way they had been at the beginning, when it had all seemed like a dream come true, and saving the world was just an optional concept. Instead we were almost staring doom in its face. Something had changed inside and I think that's when I grew up. Magical powers were great, but they all existed for a reason and lessons always follow playtime.

I was snapped out of my reverie by Annie's hysterical shrieking. "What? No! No!"

Hallie and Jestein looked deeply ashamed. "We're sorry. We thought we should protect you from the knowledge for as long as possible. We didn't want to be the ones to hurt you."

It seemed like Annie's mind had gone wandering into other people's and shed found out what our protectors had been hiding.

Annie was going off it. "I don't want this anymore! If I'd known this was involved..."

"It's been done before. Many times actually. If you do this willingly it will stop chaos for a time."

"A time? Then what? The next generation will repeat the process? There has to be a way to stop chaos forever without any more of this. Our world and the people in it are not just toys for you high and almightys to get rid of when you're bored!"

Grace burst into tears. She'd had another vision while Annie was shouting. "It was horrible," she whispered. "I saw them all. All the guardians who died to stop chaos. And it only came back! I don't want to next. Please!"

It was at this point that Ed, Abby and Hope cottoned on to what Annie and Grace knew and I suspected.

"It fulfils the prophecy," breathed Hope. She couldn't believe it. None of us could. "Our ultimate sacrifice would save the world and by losing our lives we'd win the battle. But for how long?"

"Agreed," said Ed. "There has to be another way. I for one will not go down without a fight. There has to be a way. Our crazy brains need to come up with something that nobody ever thought would work."

Hallie looked grim. "I really hope you can. I don't think anyone should have had to die for this. It's too much to ask, especially for young girls like you."

Abby looked slightly puzzled. "Young? But you're only...500. Oh yeah... blonde moment."

Jestein tapped Hallie's shoulder. "We have to go. They're calling us back through the gateway because chaos is pressing in." She hugged us all again saying, "Good luck you guys! I believe in you. You have to find a way."

Just as they disappeared in a blinding flash, I heard Hallie's voice: "otherwise you guys are completely screwed."

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><p>Hope you enjoyed! please reveiw if you like or have any suggestions. It will make me and the magical reveiw button very happy! untill next time... xx<p> 


	8. Chapter 8

Hi again peoples of the internet! im not dead! (althought that could be good or bad...) I hope you all had a nice chrismas and heres a very very late happy new year! Im sorry that i havnt posted in aaaaaaaages, it is my resolution to post more often! The sad news is, theres probably only gonna b another 3-4 posts on this thing, cos its nearly done. (agen that could be good or bad...) I am also sorry that this is a really short post, but that is because i am mid way through the next chapter which is pretty long! Oh yeah, and if you didnt notice, i finally came up with a title. YAY!

Finally, virtual hugs to Lulu Bee (again. are you my 1 and only reader/reviewer chiiiiiild?). ok byee! pls review if you liked it. Or recommend to your other internet peopley friends. if you want. you dont have to.

xxxx

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><p>Chapter 18-<p>

The gateway seemed very empty when they'd gone. It really was a case of 'what now?' Hope suggested that we stayed in the gateway and tried to get some sleep; after all, it was 4am and we couldn't really go back to our room on account of it being trashed. The only other option was going back to the woods to find the camping stuff, but no one really wanted to go all that way. It was a unanimous desicion.

We settled down on the cushions and beanbags and Annie was asleep in seconds. That girl sleeps like a rock; she is pretty much impossible to wake up. The rest of us followed minutes after. While I was asleep I had a dream. I weird premonitiony dream I really hoped wouldn't come true.

I was standing in the middle of what appeared to be a battlefield. Bodies of all manner of monsters and demons were strewn across the ground which was completely shredded, in a way that seemed familiar. I looked round and realised why. A power vortex even bigger than the one on the tennis courts tore round the perimeter of the battlefield. In the middle of the carnage I could see the six of us, in our giant warrior shield forms (or Bob, Sybil, Pete, Larry, Fred and Shaun as Ed decided to name them all). Shrieks and howls filled the air and I watched us turn to face the enemy.

Then the scene changed. What looked like a fiery red comet was blazing through a perfect blue sky. Twin silver and gold comets were hurtling straight towards the red one. Seconds before impact, the scene changed again.

This time I was looking down on the battle, but it was frozen in time. However the world zoomed in on a single sight. One body, pretty much too charred and mangled to be recognisable. Impossible to tell if not for the magic sword sheath, now empty, strapped round her waist. The name had been singed off, but I could see blonde hair. That left a choice of 2 people, neither of which I was prepared to lose.

I woke up with tears streaming down my face. The dream couldn't come true at any cost.

Chapter 19-

I didn't go back to sleep, so you can imagine how perky I was the following morning. It was about 8:30 when everyone else woke up and we decided to go back through the gateway to get some breakfast. So we headed back through the gateway and blended in with the morning rush. Once upstairs, we rummaged through all the junk in our room to find some clean school uniform and set off. Again, I never thought I'd miss the school food so much.

Once we were full of bacon we began to make a plan. We were going to go to all our normal lessons that day and try to get as much of normality as we possibly could for what would possibly be the last time. After all, we didn't know how much time we had before the final showdown and schoolwork might just take our minds off it for a little while.

It happened during physics. I hate physics, especially with mrs pritshaw. She's just a pants boring teacher and unlike Miss Greenwood she doesn't have the excuse that she's an immortal demon from another realm.

Anyway, we were sitting bored in physics. The time was dragging by painfully slowly, and I was counting minutes until the bell went for lunch and fish and chips. Then things turned weird. The clock slowed down. Yes, I know that clocks go slow sometimes, but everything and everyone in the room slowed down too; slower and slower as time passed (or rather failed to).

"thhheeee heeeeaaaat iiiiiiisss trrraaaaannsfeeerrrrred byyyy..." Mrs Pritshaw slowed to a complete stop. So did everyone else. Well, almost everyone, but I was the only one who'd noticed that we were completely frozen in time. The silence was deafening; but I had absolutely no idea whether it was this one classroom, the whole building, the whole school, the county, country, or even the whole world that had been affected.

At this point Ed looked up, saw that we were the only things moving and said, "whoa."

Abby began to snigger. It as clear she was formulating some kind of evil plan. Annie began laughing too, meaning shed read Abby's mind. Abby got out a black sharpie (sharpies are her not so secret obsession) and went over to the frozen in time Mrs p. She then proceeded to draw on glasses, a moustache, a goatee beard and a Harry potter scar. Revenge was sweet.

We were too busy celebrating our small (well tiny) victory that we didn't notice the smoke. The red smoke that I remember death-eater weirdo guy saying was pure chaos evil, was writhing through the air to form a face. The face/mask of death eater weirdo guy himself. That grabbed our attention, especially when it started to speak.

"Guardians," he gave a malicious laugh. However I still couldn't quite put my finger on why his voice sounded so familiar. "Guardians. Clearly you have no idea what you are up against. Your attempts to blend back in to your old lives are futile. Stop trying to escape and face us. We have almost gathered the strength to break through the gateways of reality and I'm assuming you are going to want to be there when we do. The final battle is drawing near. You have a choice; surrender and join our forces, or put up a good fight and die. Its your choice but choose. It will begin."

"I think there's only one choice we can make here," Hope sounded determined.

Ed nodded. "I'm not joining those creeps from the evil side, so I will fight. I will not go down without a fight and if I die, maybe the prophecy will be fulfilled and that sacrifice will save the world, at least for a while."

I turned to face the face and spat, "there's your answer, freak. Bring. It. On."

As soon as those words were spoken, the face disintegrated into a swirling mass of chaos that was drawing us in. We tried to fight it and failed. The smoke enveloped us and we were falling, just like when chaos took us to the gateway and trapped us there. Only this time we were deposited onto grass. We were on the school field.

Just as I was pondering the bizarreness of the situation, there was a horrendous noise; cracking and screeching and grinding. I turned to see a crack appearing. Not in the ground, but in mid air as if the very fabric of the universe was falling to pieces. It grew and expanded to a ridiculous size then they began swarming out of the crack. At least 500 demons, the size of small wolves but with reptilian tails and legs and unnaturally human-like eyes poured out and all began to head towards the 6 of us standing there. We were sitting targets. It had begun.

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><p>Cliffhanger! sorry(ish) for leaving you hanging! xxxx<p> 


	9. Chapter 9

Hi guys... I'm very ashamed with myself for not posting in so long. it was my new year's resolution and everything. Ive been very busy with um... stuff. It was my birthday a while back, Thanks for posting Lulu bee! To say thanks im posting on your birthday! And just so everyone knows, the next post is the end. The end of the story. Im so excited! But just so you know, i was nearly crying as i wrote the end of this bit. I dunno if anyone else will... Enjoy! xxx

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><p>Chapter 20-<p>

We drew our swords and began hacking through the mass of things. This first wave of demons was relatively easy to kill, if you stabbed or sliced them right they fell to the ground with a little puff of red smoke. But they just kept coming, thicker and faster, and we kept dispatching them reaching a speed I didn't even know I was capable of.

This attack continued for what felt like an age and with time being frozen it was impossible to tell. However I realised that I should be feeling tired or out of breath (due to my athletically challengedness) and I felt absolutely great. Then I remembered about the alleged enhanced speed and stamina. I hadn't been quite sure if that was just another of Mr Jameson's lies.

It took a minute for me to realise that the wave of wolf demons pouring from the crack was beginning to thin out. After a few moments it had stopped and there was silence. It was too quiet. Then I heard a growl coming from the crack in the fabric of space. A flock of giant birds of prey with huge fangs took to the sky. The swords weren't going to be enough, so we began firing rocks, ice, fireballs and lightning skyward and Abby conjured gale force winds to try and knock the bird demons down.

As we were focusing on the sky, more wolf demons came pouring out of the crack. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I really believed that I could die or even get properly injured in this battle. I got a bit of a reality check when one of the wolves sank its teeth into my thigh. I managed to run it through, but not before it had left massive gashes right down my leg. It hurt like crazy and I had a sneaking suspicion that the wolf things had a poisonous bite because my leg felt like it was on fire and the edges of my vision were beginning to blur. I stopped firing ice shards at the birds and fell to the ground, clamping my non sword hand over my bloody leg, willing the skin to knit back together and the poison to dissolve. I let out a sigh of relief when the fire stopped but that soon turned to a gasp of terror as a huge shadow fell over me.

I rolled over to see the biggest bird demon yet descending on me, so I did the only natural thing. I screamed my head off. But when it was just a metre away vines came shooting from the ground and wrapped around the demon, pinning it to the ground. I jumped up and grabbed my sword but before I could stab it, it fell down dead. Annie had got in there first. She'd saved my life and it wouldn't be the last time that day. I would have thanked her then, but the demons just kept on coming and it was back to hacking and slicing.

Up to this point we had all been clustered together in the middle of the field, watching each other's backs. But when the next wave hit we scattered. These monsters were more humanoid. They were better fighters, with crude spears and shields; and they had a battle plan. There were hundreds of them, marching out of the crack and we were split up, each pretty much on our own. There were too many demons. I could see them closing in. I tried slicing through some but more took their place. I put up ice barriers and slapped them around a bit with some enchanted water power (I realise that my powers weren't really as offensive as fire and lightning, but I tried!)

It was no use. I was going to be overpowered, and I couldn't even see the others. Wed known from the start that we were outnumbered but the reality of just how alone we were was finally sinking in. What we really needed was more numbers or more muscle power.

I heard Hope screaming and new that it wasn't going great for her either. I couldn't help her because the demons were nearly upon me as well. Then there was a blinding flash of light. I couldn't see where I was going and I tripped over something. I hit the ground hard and winded myself.

I was sure this was the end now. I curled up in a ball, gasping for breath. I waited for the demons to descend and finish me off, but nothing came. There was just an eerie silence. I peeked out of the corner of my eye. The demons were gone. I got up and turned around, wondering what had happened. I turned into a dazzling light. Ed had conjured her giant form and turned up the brightness so high it fried the demons and saved us all. How she'd done this I had no idea. I would have asked but she told us anyway.

"Well you remember that day on the tennis courts, when the stuff making our giant forms was like absorbed into us? Well it figures that it's still there and all you need is a way to let it out again. I got mad. I didn't want to see my friends die. And there we have the Power of Sybil!"

I grinned at that, but of course the battle was by no means over. More of the warrior demons came out of the crack, maybe a thousand this time. But these ones seemed different. They were bigger for one thing, and for another they seemed unarmed. Then one stretched out its hand and sent a ray of purple pure magic energy right at me. I dived out of the way and it was a good thing I had. The ground where I had been standing only seconds before was shredded to pieces. We'd lost our advantage of being the ones with magic and I was angry now too. I let out all my pent up emotions and found myself surrounded with the watery 20 feet of my giant form, Fred I think mine was...

20 feet was a much better size to destroy a demon army. Much less risk of being over powered. I could crush several demons with every step and send loads flying with a wave of my giant hand. Within minutes the 6 of us, in giant form, had destroyed them all. "Things are finally going our way" I thought to myself with a smile. Of course I spoke too soon as usual.

Even more even bigger warrior demons came next with the wolf things snapping round their heels. They came for us at lightning speeds and started firing their magic. They were exceedingly crappy shots. That's what I thought until I realised what they were doing.

All the magic flying through the air (our own included) began swirling faster and faster around us all. Another magic vortex was causing utter carnage and I had no idea how to stop it this time. I knew from experience that panicking or getting upset or angry would definitely not help matters.

Of course things went from bad to worse almost straight away. We began trying to fight our way through this wave of demons when there was another ear splitting noise; cracking and grinding and rumbling. Another crack was opening, and the boundaries between worlds were growing weaker every minute.

Shrieks and howls filled the air, the sound pouring out of the new crack like a tidal wave. We turned to face the enemy.

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><p>Chapter 21-<p>

Off topic, have you ever experienced déjà vu? Because that's what I felt as I turned. It was familiar. I'd been here before. But where? There was no time to ponder, more demons had arrived. I'd seen these before too, but I knew exactly where and what to do. It was Miss Greenwood's fanged, bat-winged friends. I couldn't see her at this point, but I knew she couldn't be far away.

It was back to fighting for our lives, but now we were limited to what magic we could use, so we didn't power the vortex. The demons like Miss Greenwood were much harder to kill but we were managing. By this point we must have been going for more than an hour, but because time had been frozen it was impossible to tell. It went on and on and on, all the different types of demons were attacking now, showing no sign of stopping. I still hadn't begun to tire, but I knew that it was only a matter of time.

A new problem had arisen now; the demons were learning our fighting style and becoming better at avoiding our attacks. I was trying to work out a solution when I heard a voice inside my head (and no, I was not going crazy). "Hi guys!" it was Annie. She'd moved on from just reading thoughts. That was going to be fun if we got out of this mess alive. "Were not beaten yet!" she evidently had a plan. "We have plenty of tricks left! Remember what we came up with?" I did remember. I'd been a little busy trying to stay alive but I did remember a discussion during our little camping trip about the possibilities. So, I went for it.

It took a few tries, but it became really easy to switch between giant and normal forms which gave us an advantage of unpredictability. Hope and Abby's invisibility and teleportation launched surprise attacks. Annie also found out some of the enemies' next moves and kept us posted through her new mental broadcast. It would have been annoying if it wasn't so useful. It meant that I could dart through these new openings in the enemy lines to sort out any ouchies from plans that didn't work out too well.

Teamwork is definitely the way to go when fighting an enormous demon army an there's only six of you. I kept hacking though demons, keeping an eye on the ongoing problem of the vortex. It was definitely closing in on us, almost too slowly to notice, but definitely on the move. I had no clue whatsoever what we could do about it. I couldn't channel any of the energy elsewhere or convert it into another attack. I wasn't strong enough. The 6 of us combined weren't strong enough to beat this, yet we were expected to be, we had to be. Sacrificing our lives was not what we wanted to do; we just needed a plan B.

I plunged my sword into the demon that was coming up behind me and whirled round to decapitate another one. I smacked a creature that was flying through the air towards me to the ground with the flat part of the blade and sliced a different thing into quarters.

Now there was nothing attacking me specifically I sprinted over to help Grace out. She was surrounded by a pack of the poisonous wolves. I swept them aside with a tidal wave (not helping the vortex situation, but I was trying to avoid death though other methods) and finished off one of the bat winged freaks. Just as I was pulling out my sword, I had a weird flashback. I knew where exactly where I'd seen my déjà vu moment. It had been exactly the same then, even though id been viewing it from the outside. The dream, the one I couldn't bear to see come true, had begun but with no waking up this time.

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><p>Chapter 22-<p>

I had a mini meltdown when I realised that it was happening. I felt really dizzy and I couldn't breathe but someone's arm was around me (Abby I think?) trying to keep me upright. This was bad. Very bad. Then I tripped over and slid on a patch of ice left over from one of my own attacks. I belly slid for several metres before coming to a stop, my eyes level with a pair of feet. I recognised the hideous old lady shoes instantly; she had finally joined the battle. Seeing Miss Greenwood again brought it all back into focus. She was like a bad smell, impossible to get rid of. I scrambled to my feet, sword drawn and turned to face my nemesis head on.

Miss greenwood gave an evil grin, baring her fangs. "Ah, Blair," she rasped. "How nice to see you again. Aren't you going to say hello?"

Of course I wasn't. I swung my sword at her head, but she whipped out one of her knives and blocked it.

"Now, that's no way to treat a teacher. You'll just have to learn a lesson!" She snarled and lunged with her knife but I ducked just in time. And so it continued. Everyone else was a little preoccupied so it was just her and me in single combat to the death.

She was good, there was no denying it but I managed to block or avoid almost all of her moves. Unfortunately very few of my attacks did any damage either. I had to have my wits about me otherwise it would have been all too easy to lose a limb. It was intense, but id grown stronger since the first time we'd met in the gateway. I knew what I was doing now. We were evenly matched this time, almost too even. Neither of us could find an opening, every move was counteracted. It didn't seem like it was ever going to end.

Worse, I was beginning to tire. My sword was feeling heavier and my legs were beginning to ache, but I couldn't stop fighting or my opponent would gain the upper hand. I began panting for breath, but still didn't stop. We kept on fighting. I needed a rest, but couldn't. The fight dragged on, neither of us backing down. I could tell that Miss Greenwood was tiring as well now as she was beginning to wheeze a bit.

She swung low, aiming for my feet but I jumped over it and seeing my chance rammed the hilt of my sword into her chest sending her staggering backwards. She landed in a crumpled heap and just as I was about to move in to finish her off she let out a manic cackle. I'd had enough of her games at this point, I was thoroughly exhausted. She kept laughing though, and I was a little weirded out.

"You beat me! I don't have long now before I go back to chaos to reform. You can't kill immortal demons permanently. Oh, don't look so shocked. It's going to be a while before you see me again. But I'm only one, and this battle is far from over. Poor girl, you look absolutely shattered. Better stay alert or it will be all too easy for someone to kill you." Miss Greenwood's condescending tone was irritating me more than ever. "It's just too bad it's not going to be me. I'm sure someone will get you soon though. You don't stand a chance. Have you seen how outnumbered you are? Such a shame I'm going to miss all the fun. It hasn't kicked off yet. But don't worry; the best is still to come..."

"Wait! What do you mean? What can there still be to come?"

But it was too late. She'd already disappeared in a red haze. However her last words scared me a little. Worse was still to come, bit what?

Then I heard rumbling. My first thought was that another crack was opening and the barriers were weakening further. I turned, searching for where it was opening but I couldn't see a 3rd crack anywhere. I was completely baffled as to what the noise was until Ed shouted, "Look Up!"

I did as I was told and saw the comets. Seconds away from impact, just as before.

Suddenly the red one dived, and I realised that they weren't comets at all. Now that they were closer I could see that the red comet was death-eater weirdo and the silver and gold were... Hallie and Jestein. They'd come to help us out!

They landed on the ground and the vortex disintegrated. I don't know what they did but I now felt filled with new energy and I was willing to keep fighting. Jestein sprinted over, at an impossible speed. "Forgot to mention earlier," she grinned. "The swords are magic. Channel your power through it and it'll magnify. Also get creative, come up with new tricks. We'll hold off the boss."

"You mean death-eater weirdo?" I asked.

Jestein looked a little confused then she seemed to click. "You call the Lord of Chaos 'death-eater weirdo?'"

"Well, not to his face... Hang on. He's the Lord of chaos? Crap, I had no idea!"

She laughed. "It suits him! God, that's hilarious..." and she was off to join the battle.

No longer confined by the vortex, we could use our powers and by channelling them through the swords we could make some pretty epic attacks that had never even occurred to us. Abby sent tornadoes raging. Annie cracked the ground open, swallowing up thousands of demons. Grace developed a flamethrower move, and we came up with some joint efforts too. One of the most effective: I flooded the field Abby lifted us up and away while hope an Ed sent down lightning, which was conducted through the water and electrocuted almost all the demons in sight.

It was kinda fun. Our abilities were developing at an amazing rate; every time I looked, something insanely cool was happening. Part of the initial buzz was back, but there was more fear there too. This was real; we could die. I think we were running on pure adrenaline because the battle went on and on but it looked like we were making headway.

Just as I froze another demon solid and smashed him to pieces with my sword (much less messy) I heard an all too familiar scream. I whipped around to see a plume of thick black smoke. Something had gone wrong, whether with lightning or fire or some kind of enemy attack, was impossible to tell. I fell to my knees where I stood. I didn't want to go over because I knew exactly what I'd see. I'd seen it before. But the reality was so much more heartbreaking than the dream. Especially since now I knew who it was.

Could I have prevented it by letting the others know what I'd seen? I didn't know. I just sat there and bawled, while the battle raged on around me. I wept for a long time, pausing only to build up an ice cave around me so I wouldn't be disturbed. I couldn't stop crying; the grief was almost too hard to bear. She was gone. I would never hear her insane laugh or be annoyed to hell by her again. Never. Ed was dead.

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><p>See what happens, er... soon! Please let me know what you think. Review, reccommend it, I dont care! But spread the word, for the sake of the reviewe button. he doesnt bite. Honest! until next time. xxx :D<p> 


	10. Chapter 10

First thing i'd like to say today: Happy birthday Lulu Bee! Ok everyone, she's my bestest friend and she posted on my birthday so i'm returning the favour. Go read her stories if you want to make her feel loved! :D

Next thing: This is it. This is the end of this story. Thank you a million times to Lulu Bee, Moment4Life and Ax, and MISSxMAGIC for your reviews and stuff. They made me smile. And thanks to anyone else who has read this at any point along the way, you make me feel so loved!

Ok, that's all I really have to say. Enjoy the ending, I enjoyed writing it. This whole thing's been fun! Love you all xxx

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><p>Chapter 23-<p>

I don't know how long I sat there for, half listening to the muffled sounds of the battle still going on outside my hiding place and generally feeling sorry for myself. I knew that I should really get back out there, but I couldn't seem to move my legs and there was a gnawing emptiness inside me. That was a black moment for me; I was very nearly beaten, considering admitting surrender. Even if we succeeded here, nothing could go back to how it was. We couldn't even pretend.

I began to panic as I heard a tapping and scraping outside. I leapt to my feet, fearing a demon attack and bashed my head off the low ceiling. It really hurt. The noise stopped and I prayed that they'd given up and gone home. No such luck. Water started dripping on my head, and seconds later Grace was next to me. She'd melted through the ice cave and I'd sealed it up behind her.

"Blair. What are you doing in here?"

"Ed..." I couldn't finish the sentence.

"I know, I know." Grace had clearly been crying too. "I can't believe she's gone."

"Me neither"

We sat together with our arms around each other trying to be strong.

"Grace. I don't want to fight any more," I whispered.

"Blair." her voice stopped being tearful. "What would Ed say to that? We cannot give up the fight just because she is gone. Ed would never give up like this and neither will we. Look at it like this; it's sad that she's gone and we can be sad, but she would hate that."

I smiled remembering the day that she had told us that on no account were we allowed to wear black to her funeral. Also, she wanted party rock anthem played and 'Well, this sucks' written on her gravestone.

Grace continued, "Or we can be happy that we knew her and had such an epic friend and remember all the good things. We need to get out there and save the world for Ed!"

So Grace hadn't changed the way things were, but she'd pulled me out of my hole and I wanted revenge on the people responsible for killing my best friend.

I stood up again, being careful of the low roof/ceiling this time and sent the ice cave crashing to the ground around us. As soon as I had the space, I shot up into my giant form and smashed up a load of demons who were looking especially gleeful. It felt good.

After letting them have it, I looked back at Grace. She seemed to be having a vision and so couldn't see the demon with a sword coming up behind her. I dealt with it and grabbed hold of Grace who was looking slightly wobbly.

"What did you see?" I asked.

"I've been getting flashes since the battle started of what could have been our plan B..." she sighed, flinging a fireball at some demons, causing then to scatter and leave us alone.

"Wait. Could have been? What is it and what happened?"

"I don't know exactly. I'm only seeing flashes and I haven't put all the pieces together yet. But I do know this; it needed all 6 of us with our powers to work and now there are only 5 I don't think it will. We should keep fighting for now and ill see if the visions get clearer. Who knows maybe we can win."

So we kept on fighting the uncountable demon forces of chaos.

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><p>Chapter 24-<p>

Death-eater guy (I refuse to call him Lord of Chaos) wasn't really getting his hands dirty. He appeared to be commanding the demon army and he opened a 3rd crack between the worlds letting even more goddamned demons through, but other than that he was just enjoying the show. Hallie and Jestein kept trying to attack him but he kept blocking their attacks.

It dawned on me then that, he was the one who wanted this fight; the demons were obeying him. Maybe if we picked him off they would stop.

I had a sort of plan, but it would require a little help.

I looked around, trying to catch Annie's eye. When I did I thought my idea at her and hoped that she'd pick up on what I wanted to do and tell the others.

"Message delivered boss," Annie's voice was back in my head. "But you're going to have to go find Hope."

"What do you mean?" I thought back.

"Well she was caught up in the explosion that kil-, you know... And she's lying injured on the field somewhere but she's invisible so she doesn't get attacked."

"Oh for god's sake. Where is she?"

"I dunno..."

"Thanks for the help Annie."

"No problem!" she said, not detecting my note of sarcasm. "By the way, do y-"

"Annie. Get out of my head!" I snapped.

"Ok, ok. I'm going. All systems go. As soon as you find Hope..."

I took a step backwards, beginning my search and nearly tripped over something big. I looked to see what it was but there was nothing there. At least there didn't seem to be, until I heard a moan. That was a lot easier than I had thought it would be.

"Hope?" I called, praying that it was actually her. It was. She made her face visible and gave a watery smile. "You do realise that I have to be able to see you to heal you right?" I asked.

Hope nodded. "I'm keeping my eyes shut however," she said. "I'm not good with gore and I have a feeling its pretty bad." What about me? I wasn't keen on gore either!

She reappeared fully and I let out a low whistle. She was right. It was bad. The entire right side of her body was covered in really bad burns. It looked excruciatingly painful, but Hope was putting on an amazingly brave face. Of course it was healed in a snap and she scooted off to join my plan.

I looked over to Jestein, who was trying to launch another attack on death-eater guy. She ran at him, but he simply raised a hand and sent her flying through the air.

"Want to switch?" I called.

She looked at me with disbelief, as if I was asking for a suicide mission which granted there was a chance that I was. "Are you sure?" she exclaimed.

I nodded, and something about the look on my face must have convinced her as she stepped aside and went to chop up some demons. I marched up to death-eater guy. He caught sight of me almost straight away.

"Ah, Blair," his condescending tone really pissed me off. "Having fun, are we?"

"What the hell do you think?" I spat.

"Yes. Well, I assume you didn't just come over here for a casual chat. I imagine you're going to try and launch a little attack on me, but I highly doubt you'll succeed. Especially seeing how your two friends over there have yet to actually hit me. I'm sorely tempted just to kill you now and save you the bother."

"But," I replied, my brain beginning to work. "If we die, the prophecy is fulfilled and you get sent right back to where you started!"

"Not quite," he sneered. "It doesn't work if we kill you. It only works if you give yourselves up; die at your own hands. And all of you have to do that, so I'm afraid that seeing as vie already finished off Edwina, you don't even have that option."

He was joking; he had to be just messing with my head. And bringing up Ed, that was low. Unfortunately he kept on talking:

"Enough chitchat. You came here for a reason. What is it?"

"To take you down."

"Alone?" he sounded amused. "God, even I didn't think you were that stupid."

I gave an amused smile back. During his little speech Abby and Hope had materialised either side of me and Annie and Grace had just walked round the back without him noticing. We had him surrounded. Tying to sound sweet and innocent I asked, "Who said that I was alone?"

He spun around, taking in this new turn of events and swore under his breath. "Perhaps I underestimated you," He sighed.

"Too right you did!" laughed Abby.

"Or maybe not." his hand shot out at lightning speed and coils of the red chaos smoke pinned Abby to the ground.

As she struggled to get out of it Grace screamed, "Let her go!" and sent a fireball flying towards the back of his head. He didn't turn quickly enough and it hit the target, burning away the cord that tied his stupid mask on. He put the flames out somehow, but it was too late. The mask fell to the ground and we finally saw the face of the Lord of Chaos.

I think it's safe to say that it was not what I expecting. In fact, so little was I expecting what happened I think my chin hit the floor. I knew the face behind the mask, which explains how I recognised the voice, and what's more I really wanted to smack it. Again.

That's right, it was Mr Jameson. He was the evil mastermind behind all our problems.

"You! You..." I spluttered.

"Yes it's me," he gave an evil grin.

"But why?" I demanded. "You were on the good side, and you betrayed us. You know, I used to think you were a cool teacher but now I just think you're sad."

"If you must know Blair, it's nothing personal. I've been double crossing the 'good side' for generations. It's so much more rewarding this way. However I think the time for talking's over now. As soon as you girls are out of the way the mortal realm will be ours!"

And he gave a maniacal laugh, a good one too. Mr Jameson kept laughing as he conjured up more chaos smoke and forced all 5 of us down. This was a much stronger variety; I was in agony, my life force practically being wrenched out of me. I screamed and screamed and I know that I wasn't the only one. It was so horrendous that words cannot describe the pain.

Then the world began to blur and I swear I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but I never made it there (and no, it's not because I wound up in Everlost). I was brought back by a voice, and the pain stopped and I was able to sit up.

The voice was shouting, "Oh my God Dennis. Fuck off and die in a hole, you retarded creep!"

So great was his shock, that Mr Jameson dropped the chaos magic and spun round. But he wasn't quick enough, as before he could turn to see his new attacker, he was struck down by brilliant white lightning and fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. I have to admit, I was pretty shocked, stunned and amazed as well. Even more shocked than when Mr Jameson had been revealed moments earlier. But this was a good surprise. Better than good. Amazing!

I clambered to my feet, weakened by the effects of the chaos smoke as did all the others. And we ran over and enveloped her in a massive group hug. By some form of a miracle she was back from beyond. I started crying for her all over again, but this time it was tears of pure happiness. I had no clue how it was even possible but she was back from the dead. Ed was alive!

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><p>Chapter 25-<p>

"How?" I gasped, hugging her super tightly.

"Can't breathe. You're strangling me!"

"Oops, sorry!" I loosened my grip slightly. "But seriously, how are you back from the dead?"

"Its simple chums," she declared. "It's because I didn't die."

I wasn't the only one who was confused by that.

"Wha?" cried Annie.

"I was there, I saw you die," said Hope.

"We all saw your charred and mangled corpse," said Abby.

"Ah, but you didn't." Ed was being annoyingly enigmatic. "Allow me to demonstrate my latest party trick."

She began to morph like when she shape shifted, but instead of becoming an animal she became two Eds. The copy then turned into a tiger and ran off to shred some demon butt.

The real Ed grinned, "So you see it was my not-so-evil twin that died and I had absolutely everyone fooled!"

It was a little weird to get my head round, but I think I did. I was just glad my best friend and facebook sister wasn't dead. I saw Hallie running over. She pointed at Mr Jameson lying on the ground and stared at Ed.

"Did you just kill him?" she demanded.

He gave a little moan.

"Nope!" grinned Ed. "But he's going to be out of it for a while."

"Great!" Hallie grinned back. She pulled a thick gold chain out of thin air and began tying up Mr Jameson. "He has a lot to answer for back home. I think he'll be locked up for life, which is a pretty long time when you're immortal." She looked over her shoulder. "Hey it looks like some of demons are starting to disperse! It could be nearly over."

Then there was a distant rumble of thunder and the ground began to shake and started to crack up.

"Or not."

"What is it?" I asked Hallie. "I thought the demons were going."

"Some of them are, bit they're only lesser demons," she replied. "There are worse things in the depths of chaos."

"No shit..." I muttered.

"Hey guys!" shouted Grace. "Let's not hang around to find out what's worse. The pieces have all fit together and I think I know how to end this. Come on!"

She whispered something to Abby, who beckoned us all over. We were teleporting somewhere. Where, I had no idea. Just as we were disappearing a giant blood-red tentacle snaked out of a crack in the ground and wrapped around her leg. She screamed but It was too late to stop so we teleported anyway.

We arrived on the main corridor of school, and it was silent as the grave. Time was still frozen and from where we were we could no longer hear the sounds of the battle. It was creepy.

The tentacle on Abby's leg had been cut off and was dripping thick black blood all over the floor. At least whatever the tentacle had been attached to had been left behind. She ripped it off her leg and grimaced in pain; red sucker marks were left all up her leg, but they were gone in a second thanks to me.

"Who'd have ever thought that splinching would come in useful?" said Hope, remembering the last time we'd had a splinching incident.

"Guys, we need to keep moving," called Grace, who was already half way down the corridor. "We don't have much time. If those bad things get though, there's no telling what will happen. But whatever it is, we won't be able to stop it. Come on, we need to get to the chaos gateway!"

We ran down the corridor to room 4, our echoing footsteps the only sound in the entire school. Thankfully when we reached room 4 it was empty so we had no problem getting into the cupboard and shutting the door.

"What now?" I asked Grace, who was the only person who had any idea what the hell was going to happen next.

"I ask you whether you want to go through with this," she replied.

"Why? What do we have to do?"

"Use every ounce of our powers to seal that gateway shut and make sure nothing can get in or out ever again."

"Ok!"

"Wait, I don't think I explained properly. If we do this, we give up our powers. For good. Everything will go back to how it was before. But it fulfils the end of the prophecy. By losing our guardian powers we can win the battle and sacrificing them to seal the gateway will save the world from falling to chaos. I'm not 100% happy with it, but it's our better option. Besides, a boring and non-magical existence is better no existence at all. I think the fate of the world outweighs everything here, really."

"What was the other option again?" asked Ed.

"We kill ourselves."

"Ok. I vote for Grace's new plan. Even if I will miss my lightning powers..."

"So do I," said Hope.

"Me too."

"And me!"

"Count me in."

"Looks like we're all agreed," I told Grace. "Now what do we have to do?"

"Give me your swords," she said. "We need them to channel the energy."

She then arranged them in a circle on the floor so that opposite forces were opposite each other. I had never noticed until that point that those pairs of opposite powers matched our pairs for best friends. I mean the 6 of us are best friends, but we each have a best best friend for when you have to pair up or can only invite one friend. There's Grace and me (fire and water), Annie and Abby (earth and air) and Hope and Ed (darkness and light).

Anywho, back to the story! Then Grace traced the symbol for the portal that was on the wall in the dust on the floor in the centre of the circle.

"Hold on," Annie had thought of a problem. "What about all the demons that are already out of the gateway? Do they get sucked back through the portal? Do we have to go back out there and kill them off? What?"

"Um... I don't know," sighed Grace. "I haven't seen that specific detail, but I know what we need to do ourselves, so can we please just stick to that?"

Nobody said anything.

"Good. Now we need to make a circle. Hold hands and put your right foot at the hilt of your sword."

We did what she asked and when we were all in place Grace took up a chant in the same ancient language that she had used to close the portal the last time we had been in the cupboard; only the previous night if that was at all possible. It felt like an eternity ago.

The rest of us stood there a bit awkwardly, unsure of what it was that we were actually meant to be doing. That is until it happened. I took up Grace's chant too. I had no clue what I was saying but it felt right. Call it what you want; fate, destiny, whatever. I knew in that instant that I was fulfilling whatever it was I was meant to do and that I was going to know exactly what to do when the time came. I think that the others had a similar experience there, because soon we were all chanting and the energy was building up and building up inside us, waiting to be released.

I had been secretly hoping for a while that our 'magical adventure' was going to end in some kind of seriously epic climax (fantasy nerd at work again, I know...). It looked like the time had come.

The symbol at the centre of our circle began to glow with a pulsing red light and we stopped our chant. Then we took a deep breath and let all the built up energy go.

It surged around the circle filling each of us. It was exhilarating; I held so much power in that instant, it was like nothing else. But it wasn't over yet. I channelled all the pure energy down my sword and focused all the power and energy I could muster on sealing the gateway. I had no idea that there was so much!

I carried on forcing all my power out. A blue haze had settled around me, and a different colour around my friends. I had no idea what this meant, but again it felt right. I don't know much time passed like that, but just as I was beginning to wonder how much more energy I had to channel, a bolt of pure energy shot upwards from the centre of the circle, completely obliterating the symbol that was there. A kind of shock wave of energy also radiated from the centre of the circle, travelling out and out and out, but leaving everything undamaged. I knew that it had destroyed what was left of the demons. I also felt a searing pain across the back of my hand. When I looked, it had left an intricately drawn design there. It sort of looked like it had been drawn with biro, but I knew that it wasn't.

I then realised that the vast amounts of energy had stopped flowing around our circle. The magical haze had gone too. The heat from the energy bolt had melted our swords into the floor, so we couldn't continue. But maybe we didn't need to. The gateway symbol had almost completely faded from the wall. Which must have meant we had succeeded.

"Did it work?" whispered Hope.

Abby opened her eyes. "I think it must have," she replied. "I tried to teleport outside to see, but nothing happened."

Each of us tried to use some magic, but our powers were well and truly gone. I felt different without them. Weaker, drained, as if some part of me was missing. Was this how I'd always felt before? I didn't know. Before seemed so long ago, but really it wasn't more than 6 months.

Hallie and Jestein then materialised in the cupboard. It was a little squished now, but they still squeezed us into a massive group hug.

"You guys did it!" squealed Jestein. "It was amazing! There was this bolt of energy and all the cracks just closed up, and then all the demons just disintegrated. Poof!"

"We lost our powers and our swords," said Grace. "But the prophecy is complete."

We got another hug.

"Wow..." breathed Hallie. There wasn't really anything else to say. I stifled a yawn. I hadn't realised how tired I was, after everything that had happened that day.

Hallie noticed my yawn. "You need to get some rest. We'll handle everything. Get it all back to normal."

I was grateful as I sank to the floor. As I blacked out, I gave a sad smile. It was finally over.

* * *

><p>The Last Chapter- A week later<p>

It was Saturday morning and we were heading up to the roof. Everything really was back to normal. We came around in physics, time exactly where it left off. You could almost pretend that the whole thing had never happened. Life was back to the mundane and boring. School was just school and bitches were still bitches.

But it did happen. We had the battle scars and bruises to prove it, and we each have the weird mark on the back of our hand which is definitely not biro. The school field was still wrecked. Hallie and Jestein may have forgotten to fix it when they removed all the other traces of what happened. The school were blaming the weather. What kind of weather does that? Although, they wouldn't believe that it was the result of an epic magical battle if we had told them.

Near the top of the stairs, Grace turned around. "Do you remember the last time we were up here?" she asked with a smile

"Christmas," I answered.

"With the snow!" added Annie. We had so many memories of all the fun things that had happened, as well as the not so fun. But I refused to dwell on those.

We came out into bright sunshine on the roof, and couldn't believe what happened next. Hallie and Jestein were sitting on the grass that was still on the roof.

"Hi!" called Jestein.

"What are you guys doing here?" I asked.

"Well you're still the guardians and we're still your protectors," she explained.

"But, we don't have powers anymore."

"And?" said Hallie. "I once told you that a day would come when you would return to normality. And it has. I also told you that there will always be traces of your power because of the magic in the very core of your being that nobody can take away from you. You also have the guardians' mark, which you wouldn't have otherwise."

So that's what the thing on the back of my hand was...

"But since your main powers are gone," continued Jestein. "You're going to need these." she handed each of us a new sword; identical to the ones that were destroyed.

"But I thought that all the demons were either sealed in or destroyed," Annie chipped in.

"Not quite. There are still the frite demons that can triverse realms. You might see one occasionally."

I looked at my 5 best friends and we all grinned at each other. We'd thought that it was all over, but it wasn't. It was just a whole new beginning.


	11. Chapter 11

Ok, so I know i posted the ending but I couldn't resist writing this. Please enjoy the final 'proper' ending xxx

* * *

><p>Epilogue - 20 years later<p>

Maybe we're just crazy people who made the whole thing up when we were bored. I can't say we wouldn't have. Of course, the magic sword hidden in my sock drawer and the mark on my hand are pretty solid proof that it happened.

Either way, that was one of the best and worst years of my life. Even now we still remember it. Things have been pretty uneventful ever since by comparison though. We finished school and got jobs, and of course the 6 of us are still best friends. We've been through too much together not to be.

The prophecy was fulfilled but nobody really expected it to happen quite like it did. Also Hallie and Jestein were right about there still being traces of the magic left even though we gave up our powers to stop chaos. What's left still baffles people occasionally, which is always fun.

Hope was always quite quiet. Sometimes she almost seemed to fade away onto the background. I've looked around and missed her in a pretty empty room quite a few times and her disappearing act always annoyed people, what with her being quite well known. Hope became a bestselling author in kids' fiction. She wrote everything; spy books, realistic depressed stories, even an epic fantasy saga. However the one thing she refused to write was our story. She told us we were welcome to it, but she didn't want the truth out there. I guess she has a point. Besides I don't want to piss her off because if she gets really mad you can hear a rumble of thunder in the distance. The good news is she is no longer capable of frying annoying people (well good for us at least...)

It was always impossible to keep secrets from Annie. She always seemed to know exactly what we were planning; probably as a left-over from her mind-reading days (although to be honest most of us, especially Hope, were glad it was over as there was less chance of her finding out our embarrassing secrets). It did however prove a big problem around her birthday, especially the year we planned a surprise party. Annie became an award winning scientist (she definitely had the brains) specialising in plants and natural disasters. She was always good with plants (as opposed to me who kills everything I try to grow...), and her connection to earth magic gave her an advantage and so she was able to predict earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Ed was always completely unpredictable and maybe a little insane. She did a variety of jobs, all over the world including being a fisherperson and a brief stage career. Half the time we don't know what she's doing, but whatever it is she makes a lot of money. Maybe she's a spy, or maybe not. She also acquired a large collection of pets, including Sybil the hamster (who was a boy), a fish called Larry and a turtle called Fluffy (because he isn't!). Her fondness for small and cute animals is best explained by all that time she spent as a turtle and a squirrel and whatever else. Whatever's left of her animal powers allows her to have fascinating conversations with Fluffy or so she swears. I don't know how far to believe that one, but I wouldn't say anything because as with Hope you can still hear a rumble of thunder if she gets angry.

Abby kept more of the enhanced speed and stamina than any of the rest of us, but then she's always been the sporty one. Especially now that she's a famous athlete, with several Olympic gold medals. Abby has also always loved to travel, even if she can't skip dimensions in matter of seconds anymore. She especially loved flying even if she has to do it in a plane now. Fortunately travelling is a big part of what she does as she gets to go and compete all over the world. It was her idea that we all went on a big holiday together in the summer before we split up to go to uni. That summer is one of my favourite memories.

Grace kept a touch of her sight. Not much, just the occasional hunch. And an ability to predict the weather. She wasn't a TV weather girl, no she was way too shy, but she is the sciencey person who actually predicts the weather. She's almost always right. She also has a secret inner pyromaniac side. She has a knack for barbequing food to perfection, and we have spent many a night in someone's back garden burning stuff and setting fire to, I mean toasting marshmallows. Not quite the same as throwing fireballs, but fun all the same.

And me? Well, I became a doctor much to everyone's amusement due my failure in brownies. I guess I kept a touch of my healing abilities, and to be honest, I enjoy helping people who need my help. I also live on the coast, near the sea (I'm drawn to the water somehow...) and although I can't breathe underwater anymore, I can still hold my breath for longer than most people (meaning I always won those competitions; staring contests not so much...) I also try and will a white Christmas to happen every year, but I have never been able to repeat that trick. I can't stop the rain anymore either, but the weather never seems to mess up my hair for some 'unexplainable' reason, which is great, because I can still laugh at all the poor saps who look like drowned rats. Ah the simple pleasures of life!

It makes me sad sometimes to think of all the things we've seen and done, the things we know are real and to know that nobody else can know about them. Some days I want to shout it out and spread the truth but nobody would believe us for a start and we'd probably end up being escorted to the bouncy room.

But that doesn't mean we forgot. We have remembered everything from 20 years ago. Even though we sacrificed pretty much all of our powers to seal chaos out, our work as guardians continues.

Every few years they have these school reunion things. It's kind of rubbish but we go anyway. Nobody else knows that the only reason we go is to check our final act of magic is holding. Occasionally we see a frite demon that can cross realms, so we sort them out. Fighting them isn't the same as it was though; it never will be again. Of course, we can still hold the fort until the next generation of guardians show up. That could happen any day now or be another 20 years. Hallie and Jestein have been told to get them in touch when they appear. Hopefully they'll have a much easier time of it than we did.

We beat the forces of chaos 20 years ago and Chaos shouldn't rise again anytime soon but if it does well be ready. Maybe we can't fight as well as we could, but our swords are ready to save the world again.

Just in case.


End file.
